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]

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 estat [more]

Stuyvesant Town

The three senior creditors for the Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village apartment complex are expected the buy the properties at a foreclosure auction on Monday, according to Crain’s. The senior lenders, represented by special servicer CWCaptial, currently hold the complex’s $3 billion mortgage. While the mezzanine lender upstart partnership between Pershing Square Capital Management and Winthrop Realty could pose a challenge, it’s considered unlikely that they will — the team would have to bid more than the senior debt’s $3 billion face value in order to acquire the complex, which is currently valued at $1.9 billion. [more]

Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village

A state Supreme Court judge ruled that MetLife could remain liable for over $200 million in rent overcharges at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, which the [more]

Fitch Ratings has handed MetLife, the largest U.S. life insurer, a downgrade to A from A+ on potential losses tied to commercial real estate investments, following in the footsteps of similar actions by Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s last year. MetLife, which holds $50 billion in commercial real estate loans and commercial mortgage-backed securities, is expected to post a loss of between $2.2 billion and $2.6 billion for the five quarters that will end in December 2010, Fitch said. MetLife posted profits in 2008 as the market turned sour by using derivatives, but lost $2.57 billion in losses during the first three quarters of 2009. U.S. life insurers, with more than $450 billion in commercial holdings, have yet to see the worst of the commercial real estate fallout, said Andrew Davidson, Fitch’s senior director. Davidson said losses on those holdings, like apartment buildings, offices and shopping malls, will come into view over the next six months, threatening another $15 billion in losses. [more]

Before collateralized mortgage-backed securities, one of the best
sources of real estate mortgages came from insurance companies. The
Mortgage Bankers Association estimates that approximately $222 billion
in direct mortgage loans are held by life insurance companies maturing
through 2018. Earlier this month, Commercial Mortgage Alert noted that loan originations
by the 30 insurance organizations with the largest mortgage portfolios
plunged by 35 percent in 2009, to $36.7 billion from $56.8 billion last
year, according to its annual survey of lending by life insurers. The
report notes that the total value of outstanding loans by these 30 insurers
is $260.8 billion, a slight increase of 3.7 percent from the prior
year. [more]

From the May issue: Darcy Stacom is the vice chairman in the
Investment
Properties Institutional Group at CB Richard Ellis. She has racked up
$39.2 billion in
advisory and sales transactions including representing MetLife in the
$5.4 billion sale of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in 2006.
Stacom talked to The Real Deal about
living in the same rental apartment building for more than two decades,
starting her career in real estate at age 14 at competing firm Cushman
& Wakefield, where her father Matthew Stacom is a veteran broker
and sister Tara is a top broker, and never dressing the corporate part. [more]