From left: Former CBRE Group broker Jon Zuckerman, now an executive managing director at Newmark Knight Frank, CBRE brokers Mary Ann Tighe and Stephen Siegel, former CBRE tri-state President Mitchell Rudin, current president of U.S. operations for Brookfield Properties, and
Keith Caggiano, vice president at CBRE

The word on the street has always been that it’s a dog-eat-dog world in the city’s largest commercial brokerage firms, but brokers rarely reveal how the cutthroat maneuvering plays out.

But now, in a bombshell lawsuit filed this month, former CBRE Group broker Jon Zuckerman provides an inside account claiming he was forced to resign and give up his lucrative MetLife account while CBRE allegedly sought to consolidate control over his clients.

The suit only names the commercial property firm CBRE (under the name CB Richard Ellis Real Estate Services) and Zuckerman’s former partner, broker Keith Caggiano, and does not name MetLife or other CBRE executives. [more]

MetLife is actively lending, providing a $350 million, five-year, fixed-rate mortgage for a joint venture between affiliates of Edge Fund Advisors and HSBC Alternative Investment at the Bertelsmann Building at 1540 Broadway through its real estate investments department among other investments, the company announced today.

“We are pleased to be providing financing for such a high quality asset as 1540 Broadway,” said Robert Merck, senior managing director and head of real estate investments for MetLife. “We originate, underwrite and manage each investment with a long-term view, and we are well positioned to identify and complete attractive financing opportunities in top-tier markets such as New York.” — Katherine Clarke [more]

MetLife has grabbed a 2 percent share of New York’s residential mortgage market just as rock-bottom lending rates and rising consumer confidence begin to spur home sales, according to Crain’s. The nation’s largest life insurer, with $55.9 billion in revenues, is planning a measured approach to growth in its hometown.

“As a new lender, we don’t have the baggage of the past,” said Tony Clintock, northeast regional sales leader for the residential mortgage division of the bank.

The move into the residential market has been in the works since 2008 when MetLife acquired the residential mortgage business from Tennessee-based First Horizon National. Since then, the sales force has grown to 40, covering all five boroughs. Most of its volume comes from financing sales at dozens of new condo developments where the bank acts as the projects’ preferred lender,
such as Extell Development’s the Aldyn and the Rushmore. [more]

Developer SDS Procida couldn’t have asked for better weather to show off the last three penthouses at the Richard Meier-designed On Prospect Park.

Brilliant sunshine and cooling breezes greeted visitors last night to the glass and steel tower at 1 Grand Army Plaza (though the wind did cause quite a few cocktail napkins to disappear). Brokers and potential buyers wandered through three newly unveiled penthouses — all pure white in typical Meier fashion — with floor-to-ceiling windows and private terraces. (See party pics above.)
[more]

Financing for New York City real estate projects is back. Of the top 35 deals done in the last 12 months, 24 were refinancing and nine were new loans taken out of acquisitions, according to Crain’s. The largest deal was an $800 million refinancing of 245 Park Avenue, between 46th and 47th streets, for which Brookfield Asset Management and ING Clarion tapped the Bank of China in September 2010. It was followed closely by Boston Properties’ $700 million loan from MetLife for the Citigroup Center at 153 East 53rd Street, between Third and Lexington avenues, in March 2011, and a $650 million refinancing of One Bryant Park between 42nd and 43rd streets in June last year by Bank of America. [more]

Fresh on the heels of its “Selling New York” cameo last night, the Upper East Side’s Manhattan House has some good news for prospective buyers: two big lenders have pre-approved the 575-unit condominium conversion for conventional and jumbo mortgages, while Fannie Mae has agreed to back some of those loans. According to Crain’s, developer O’Connor Capital Partners said the lenders, MetLife Bank and Gibraltar Private Bank and Trust, have been named preferred lenders for the project. Fannie Mae will back loans for units on floors 11 through 17 until certain pre-sale requirements are met, at which point it will approve financing for the remainder of the building. [more]

Africa Israel USA’s condominium conversion at the Clock Tower building near Madison Square Park is back on track — in modified form — and set to open within two years, the developer told Real Estate Weekly. The former MetLife building at 5 Madison Avenue, once envisioned as 55 luxury apartments designed by Donatella Versace, has been reconceived as a 99-unit project with smaller units of around 2,000 square feet each, said Peter Rosenberg, managing director of development for AFI USA. Versace is now out of the picture, and Mark Zef Design Interiors has been tapped to take her place. [more]

Among last year’s major deals involving insurance companies were refinancings are (from left) 345 Park Avenue, 125 West 55th St.

From the February issue: With their recession-proof premiums still rolling in, traditionally conservative insurance companies are ramping up their investments in New York City commercial real estate. “REITs and insurance companies have the perfect storm to acquire properties,” said Jahn Brodwin, senior managing director at Manhattan consulting firm FTI Schonbraun McCann Group. “Both are looking for the same criteria. They want low-leveraged transactions with conservative underwriting and longer terms — 10-year deals as opposed to the three, five years that banks want. They are looking for stable, core properties.” [more]

From left: Jeffrey Apprel, Frank Tamayo, Ken Evans and 260 Madison Avenue (building photo source: PropertyShark)

Mortgage industry veteran Jeffrey Appel has left Bank of America to start a new team at MetLife Home Loans.

Appel — a well-known figure in the industry and host of the Real Estate Board of New York’s Real Estate Master’s Series — and his partner at Bank of America, Ken Evans, are joining forces with Brooklyn-based Trachtman & Bach alumni John Bach and Frank Tamayo.

“We have basically put together a dream team to cover Manhattan and Brooklyn with MetLife,” Appel said.
[more]

Scott Gomez, a client and friend of Victor Shaio, and the Chelsea Mercantile

While hockey coaches, trainers and referees are figures of authority on the ice, one mortgage originator has emerged as the most trusted man in real estate among some of the National Hockey League’s biggest stars. A relative unknown three years ago, Victor Shaio, a mortgage originator who heads an eponymous group with MetLife Home Loans, is an unlikely sensei — he contends that the glamorous life of an athlete holds no appeal to him.
But today, industry insiders say Shaio is the go-to guy among Rangers players looking for solid real estate advice. [more]