A William Street New School accommodation facility is one of five New York City addresses making its debut on Trepp’s list of distressed properties in November, according to data from the real estate analytics firm.

New to the 56-item list of distressed properties is Metro Loft Management’s 111,000-square-foot, 17-story building at 84 William Street, currently being used as a student housing facility for attendees of the New School, according to the university’s website. The company is non-performing on a loan beyond maturity, with a balance of $28.9 million, after being current in October, the data shows. (note: correction appended) – Katherine Clarke [more]

Adam Leitman Bailey represents owners at 20 Pine (left) and Stephen Ross (top right) is locked in an ILSA dispute with buyer Vasilis Bacolitsas (bottom right)

From the December issue: Not everyone has the stomach for a lawsuit — taking an otherwise private disagreement into the public realm and submitting it to the cool evaluation of the court.

But sometimes situations are untenable, and parties consider judicial intervention the only recourse. The resulting lawsuits can have a broad impact, reaching beyond the businesses involved to encompass the industry as a whole.

Consider the condominium contract dispute that could affect the way New York City developers handle purchase agreements for new condos. Or the suit between residential brokers whose failed alliance could become fodder for a jury trial. Or a federal agency’s offensive against a slew of major banks over mortgage-backed securities.  [more]

Tenants of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village have received an alternative partnership offer just days after it was revealed they had partnered with Brookfield Asset Management to explore buying the properties, Crain’s reported.

A partnership between developer Gerald Guterman and Westwood Capital issued letters to tenants today, reminding them of a proposal Guterman and Westwood sent them in 2010. The duo’s plan involves converting all units in the complex to co-ops, which the tenants would then buy for close to $175 per square foot. [more]

Stuyvesand Town and City Council member Daniel Garodnick

The tenant association for Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village voted yesterday to partner with Brookfield Asset Management to explore buying the properties, the New York Times reported. The association is aiming to convert the complexes, with 11,232 apartments in total, into an affordable condominium or cooperative in a plan that could see residents choose to buy their apartments or remain as rent-regulated tenants.

The tenants are hoping that the lenders who control the property, who are represented by CW Capital, will sell it to them rather than someone who may wish to displace the properties’ long-term residents, the Times said. [more]

A bill pending in the New York State Senate would allow landlords who had improperly deregulated apartments while receiving tax benefits from the city to buy their way out of paying tax breaks, free themselves from back-rent claims and keep their apartments at market-rate rents, according to the New York Times.

The bill comes as a possible solution to a ruling by the New York Court of Appeals in 2009 stating that the owners of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village complexes had falsely deregulated apartments. About 40,000 other apartments in Manhattan were similarly affected by the ruling. [more]

Academy Award-winner Dianne Wiest, who starred in “Hannah and Her Sisters” and more recently, in HBO’s “In Treatment,” has joined a group of tenants at her 229 West 78th Street home in a rent-stabilization lawsuit against their longtime landlord. According to the Post, the actress and her cohorts are taking a page out of the book of the Stuyvesant Town & Peter Cooper Village apartment complex, claiming that their landlord illegally charged them market-rate rents because the 100-unit building was simultaneously getting a J-51 tax abatement from the city between 1993 and 2004. [more]

Stuyvesant Town

From the March issue: Tishman Speyer Properties may have suffered one of the biggest debacles of the downturn with Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village, but the firm appears to be getting its footing back. Over the past year, the 33-year-old Manhattan-based company has gone on a spree of buying, selling, developing and leasing buildings, as well as restructuring some of its debt. Last year, the firm bought around $1.06 billion of property around the world, up from $99 million in 2009, according to the Wall Street Journal. It wasn’t just a purchaser, though: The firm sold about $1.9 billion worth of property in 2010, up from $500 million a year earlier. [more]

From left: City Council member Daniel Garodnick, Rose Associates’ Adam Rose and trees in Stuyvesant Town

Special servicer CWCaptial Asset Management is set to remove hundreds of trees from the sprawling Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village residential complex, according to the Wall Street Journal, after residents complained the greenery posed a safety threat. The trees, which former owner Tishman Speyer began planting at the 11,200-unit residential community in 2006, allowed “for somebody of ill will to hide and potentially perform a criminal act,” said City Council member Daniel Garodnick at the time. But while residents butted heads with Tishman Speyer over the arboreal plantings, Adam Rose, co-president of Stuy Town property manager Rose Associates, said he agrees with the tenants. [more]

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest U.S. public pension plan otherwise known as Calpers, is shifting its strategy away from residential real estate investments after getting badly burned on several boom-era housing deals, Bloomberg News reported. Perhaps the most infamous of those deals was Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, in which Calpers lost a $500 million stake after the complex was turned over to creditors last year. Yesterday, the pension fund’s investment committee voted to move roughly half of its real estate investments from “higher-risk” assets like housing into commercial property, in order to avoid falling victim to real estate booms and busts in the future. [more]

Stuyvesant Town and Robert Scaglion, a senior managing director with property manager Rose Associates

Rents on nearly 600 vacant units at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village are set to climb an average of $2,100 or more in the coming months, according to property manager Rose Associates, following the completion of an average renovation of $84,210 to each unit.

The project, set to cost roughly $48 million, according to special servicer CWCapital, which took control of the property early last year, includes the renovation of the 570 apartments in a similarly modern style to former owner Tishman Speyer, which renovated many of the units when it bought the 110-building complex for $5.4 billion in 2006, according to Robert Scaglion, a senior managing director with Rose Associates.

Scaglion said that despite the increases, which would bring rents roughly up to the market value of similar apartments, the units will remain rent-stabilized. Many of the units have rents of $900 a month, he noted, which would mean those rents would go up to roughly $3,000 a month. [more]