The top 50 biggest Manhattan commercial property purchases last year ranged in price from $10.6 million to $600 million, according to The Real Deal’s 2010 Data Book (see the top 50 biggest commercial buys after the jump). The $600 million deal was the purchase of Worldwide Plaza at 825 Eighth Avenue by an investment group led by George Comfort & Sons and RCG Longview from Deutsche Bank. The $10.6 million deal was the sale of a second-floor office condominium at 415 West 13th Street to luxury menswear designer Canali USA. To purchase the 2010 Data Book, click on the magazine cover, click here or see the link at the top of The Real Deal Web site. [more]

From the February issue: It’s been a sort of parlor game in New York’s real estate community for
some time: speculating on whether peak-market buyers will hold on to
their highly leveraged properties.
Then, in a move that shook the industry last month, Tishman Speyer
Properties and BlackRock Realty decided to turn over the keys to the
$5.4 billion Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village.
But not everyone has gone this route. Other overextended borrowers
have kept control of their properties following a debt restructuring,
including developers Lev Leviev and Joseph Moinian.
As part of a workout — the complex process that’s often decided by
the leverage each party has in the development — the bank or private
equity firm must weigh its options.  [more]

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A fund that won a $3.9 million judgment in September against embattled developer Kent Swig is seeking to enforce its priority claim on certain of Swig’s assets, and prevent competing creditors who are owed a total of nearly $50 million from getting to them first.

The fund, affiliated with Midtown-based investment firm RCG Longview, sued Swig as an individual, as well as five of his creditors, to force a turnover of eight assets to repay a $3.9 million debt, a petition filed Jan. 7 in New York State Supreme Court says. In the same filing, the fund alternately asked the court to turn the assets over to a sheriff or put them in the hands of a receiver.

But a main goal of the suit was to make sure the other five creditors did not get their hands on the assets before the fund named RCG LV Debt IV Non-REIT Asset Holdings, did. The attached chart includes lenders and other creditors who have won court judgments against him. [more]

The year 2009 was a trying time to be a real estate broker, developer or investor, but it never lacked for news. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, the industry watched in awe — and sometimes horror — as residential sales ground to a virtual halt, condo projects stopped in their tracks, office rents shrank and retail stores disappeared. Buyers at buildings like 22 Renwick sued to get out of their contracts, and some were granted the opportunity to back out of their contracts. Meanwhile, an amazing cast of characters — from Kent Swig to Harry Macklowe to Lev Leviev — publicly fought for survival. There were also glimmers of hope, from the opening of the High Line in June to the expansion of Halstead Property into Connecticut to the sale of Former Lehman Brothers CEO Dick Fuld’s sale 16-room co-op apartment at 640 Park Avenue for $25.87 million, almost $5 million more than he bought it for two years ago. Click here to see The Real Deal staff’s picks for the stories that most altered the New York City real estate landscape in 2009. [more]

From the September issue: Peter Duncan, the president of George Comfort & Sons, would
probably not be faulted by many in the real estate community for
whooping it up with a big “I told you so” to all those who predicted he
would never seal the deal on the purchase of Worldwide Plaza. But
unlike many of his contemporaries, Duncan refuses to take a victory lap
to celebrate the deal, or boast about his prowess in timing the market. “It’s like any acquisition. Buyer’s remorse kicked in immediately,” Duncan told The Real Deal, in a half-joking sort of way. His
Madison Avenue-based firm, which previously owned more than 7 million
square feet of office space, had until recently been a rather
low-profile operation in New York. [more]

Worldwide Plaza’s new owners, George Comfort & Sons and RCG Longview, have 639,540 square feet ready to rent and are talking to prospective tenants, the New York Post reported. Brokers said there are several tenants looking for more than 100,000 square feet that might be interested in the space. The building’s current ads place it at 1.9 million square feet, leading to the purchase price of $318.42 per square foot. Comments

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After the last deal
fell apart, George Comfort & Sons and RCG Longview finally
completed a $600 million deal with Deutsche Bank to purchase Worldwide
Plaza. Rather than creating a joint venture, Deutsche Bank will just
provide a $470 million mortgage for George Comfort and put up about
$135 million in equity. The price comes to about $375 a square foot for
the 1.6 million-square-foot tower at 825 Eighth Avenue, and the deal is expected to close
later this month. As part of the agreement, Deutsche Bank will write
down the original $1 billion mortgage it held on the property when
Macklowe Properties bought the building in 2007.

George Comfort & Sons President Peter Duncan blamed lender Deutsche Bank for the breakdown in a deal to buy the former Macklowe Properties Worldwide Plaza west of Times Square. The real estate firm and investment partner RCG Longview were “disappointed that the seller, Deutsche Bank AG, has decided not to honor the contract,” Duncan said in a statement. The companies were in contract to purchase the 1.8 million-square-foot office tower at 825 Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th streets after the bank took it back from Macklowe Properties. Duncan held out hope the deal could still be finalized. “We have an executed sales contract, a significant hard deposit in place, and even a closing date of June 30th from the seller’s attorneys. We are ready to close,” he said. TRD

Real estate sources say a deal to
sell Worldwide Plaza — one of the seven office towers Harry Macklowe
was forced to return to his lenders — has fallen apart. This is the
second time a deal to sell the building has fallen through, and both
instances involved George Comfort & Sons as the buyer. In the
latest transaction to break down, George Comfort and real estate
investment firm RCG Longview struck a deal to purchase the 47-story
tower for an undisclosed sum earlier this month. Deutsche Bank, which
controls the building, would have retained a stake and provided
financing for the deal. Sources say Deutsche Bank killed the
transaction. According to the Wall Street Journal, the building is on the market again. [Crain's] and [WSJ]