From left: Queens Place and Nine Metrotech

Forest City Ratner’s Cleveland-based parent company Forest City Enterprises completed more than $300 million in property financings in the quarter ending Jan. 31, 2012, including two worth a combined $163 million in New York City, it announced today.

The company closed a 10-year, $87 million loan for Queens Place, a 455,000-square-foot, five-level retail center on Queens Boulevard. It also purchased the existing $75 million loan at Nine Metrotech, a 317,000-square-foot office building in the MetroTech Center office campus in downtown Brooklyn, and then closed a new 10-year, $63 million loan for the same property. [more]

The sudden jump of existing home sales in the U.S. in August was probably a fluke, according to CNBC, and evidence suggests sales will decrease back to shaky levels next month.
Sales rose 7.7 percent month-over-month in August, but brokers say its largely because of delayed sales from the spring. The data reflects signings that may have taken place in May and June, before the global economic turmoil resurfaced in August.
And don’t look for the trend to continue. Consumer confidence has dipped and the new conforming loan limit means fewer buyers will have access to financing. [more]

From the December issue: We’re programmed to believe that lying is bad; telling the truth is good. So two years ago, when the economy was in a tailspin and lenders started employing a strategy disparagingly dubbed “extend and pretend” for struggling commercial property loans, it’s no wonder they got a bad rap.

Critics painted the banks as liars who were doing little more than kicking the can down the road when they gave borrowers extra time to pay their due. By refusing to write down underwater mortgages, they said, banks were only delaying their inevitable losses and masking the true extent of the crisis.

But while the commercial real estate recovery still has a long way to go, it now appears that last year’s apocalyptic predictions were at least somewhat exaggerated. Whatever happened to the proverbial “other shoe” that was supposed to drop? [more]

Government-owned mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are pushing back against private banks that have failed to buy back loans that didn’t satisfy underwriting standards, according to Bloomberg News. In total, roughly $13 billion worth of loans filed in buyback requests have not been fulfilled by lenders including Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase, according to Fannie and Freddie. [more]

The real estate crash has hurt Broadway Partners, which at nine years
old is one of the newer kids on the block, more than some of its rivals
in commercial real estate. The company’s strategy was to purchase
buildings using highly leveraged loans, wait for rents to increase and
sell the buildings for a profit within two years. The company purchased
28 office properties nationwide in 2006 and 2007. Already, Broadway
Partners has defaulted on more than a dozen buildings’ short-term loans
and has seen two of its buildings fall into foreclosure. It is unclear
whether the company will be able to raise enough capital to pay off its
loans and survive. [more]

From the August issue: Over the last two years, the dollar volume of distressed commercial
real estate loans at a sampling of New York-based community banks has
risen eightfold. That’s only the beginning of a wave of delinquencies
expected to hit portfolio lenders, analysts said.
Experts predict more red ink in the mid-year earnings reports
released this month from lenders such as New York Community Bank,
Flushing Savings Bank and Astoria Federal Savings. These institutions
are considered stable lenders, but have still seen a steady increase in
failing loans. [more]

Steve Cuozzo’s Realty Check column in the New York Post offers a
reality check for followers of the New York City real estate market.
Despite claims that the market is improving, Cuozzo says reality shows
otherwise. Very few people are buying up distressed real estate, at low
prices or otherwise, and banks aren’t lending. Lenders aren’t yet
canceling and selling off loans. And while many say that vacancy rates
are not too high and that predictions of financial services firms
putting office space on the market have not come to pass, many
companies are leaving office space empty. [more]