Stuyvesant Town

Two residents of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village are asking a judge to dismiss the planned $68.7 million settlement between tenants and ownership over allegations of rent overcharges. [more]

Stuyvesant Town

Thousands of residents in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village are flummoxed by a lease clause that allows their landlords to hike their rent in the middle of their lease, the Wall Street Journal reported. Roughly 40 percent of the 11,200-unit complex could see rents rise as much as $1500 due to the clause, which was the result of a previous lawsuit tenants brought against a consortium of investors led by Tishman Speyer and Metlife, and against landlord CWCapital Asset Management…. [more]

From left: Amy Roberts and Stuy Town

Tenants of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village have reached a settlement in their long-running class action lawsuit against the owners of Manhattan’s largest apartment complex. The deal, signed today, is worth roughly $146.9 million, including almost $68.8 million cash in compensation for rent overcharges over a nine-year period.

“We believe this settlement provides an extraordinary recovery for our clients and we couldn’t be happier for them,” Ronald Aranoff, an attorney at Bernstein Liebhard who represented the tenants, said in the statement. [more]

Robert Merck

Life insurance giant MetLife is reorganizing its real estate and private placement groups to make way for the creation of a third-party asset-management business focused on real estate equity, commercial mortgages and debt private placement, Reuters reported.

The newly formed MetLife Real Estate Investors, will be headed by Robert Merck, MetLife’s currentglobal head of real estate investments. The group is set to take charge of $43 billion in commercial mortgages and $10 billion in direct real estate investments. [more]

Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village

A new study shows that the of sale of Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village to the partnership entity between tenants and Brookfield Asset Management would likely offer holders of the property’s first mortgage the best returns. The study, first reported by Crain’s, was undertaken by JPMorgan Securities. The report also found that selling the 11,000-unit rent-regulated complex, which has been in foreclosure since 2010, to the partnership was the development’s most likely outcome. [more]

Having punished the five largest mortgage servicers for their foreclosure practices to the tune of a $25 billion settlement, federal regulators are now setting their sights on the next tier of financial firms whose methods are increasingly coming under fire.

According to the New York Times, the Federal Reserve has recommended fines for eight more firms: HSBC’s U.S. division, SunTrust Bank, MetLife, U.S. Bancorp, PNC Financial Services, EverBank, OneWest and Goldman Sachs. [more]

Stuyvesant Town/ Peter Cooper Village

MetLife and the tenants of Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village have tentatively reached a deal to settle their lawsuit over rent deregulation, Crain’s reported.

The insurance giant said in a regulatory filing earlier this week that it had reached a settlement with tenants pertaining to the well-known 2007 lawsuit over illegally deregulated apartments for which MetLife and later Tishman Speyer received J-51 tax benefits. [more]

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]