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]

From the September issue: In its eight years of publication, The Real Deal has covered the real estate industry in a city that’s been transformed by a massive building boom, was crippled by the subsequent bust, and is now in the midst of a tentative recovery.
The compendium of stories we’ve written runs the gamut from the record-setting building and apartment purchases during the boom, to the toppling of mega-developers during the bust, to new entrepreneurs trying to get into the real estate game during today’s fragile recovery. This month, for the anniversary of our 100th issue, we bring you some of the most compelling stories we’ve tracked in these pages, many of which have unfolded and evolved over time, much as the magazine itself has. And watch the video below to see The Real Deal Publisher Amir Korangy talk about the special process for creating the unique 100th issue cover.
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From left: Attorney Sam Himmelstein, Stuyvesant Town and 56 Seventh Avenue (source: PropertyShark)

[Updated 2:47 p.m.] A New York state appellate court ruled yesterday that the landmark decision to protect rent-stabilized
tenants in the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village case should be applied retroactively, a move
that could open the floodgates to millions of dollars in rent overcharges at other developments.
The new case, in which the court actually upheld the landlord’s lower court victory, involved a
Manhattan couple looking to overturn a prior rent-decontrol ruling at 56 Seventh Avenue in the West
Village. The tenants argued that the Stuy Town case, called Roberts vs Tishman Speyer, where Roberts was a tenant, should allow them to have their market-rate apartment rents refunded in the form of overcharges.

“The Court of Appeals, when they decided Roberts , specifically left open the question of retroactivity,”
said attorney Sam Himmelstein, who represented the tenants in the new case. “Landlords have been
making motions to dismiss these cases saying that it shouldn’t be applied retroactively. Even though we
lost the case, it’s a massive victory for tenants at large.” [more]

New York City Council member Dan Garodnick, who represents Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, said a bill being kicked around the state senate ignores thousands of harmed individuals, lost affordable apartments and the law. In an interview with the Village Voice, Garodnick shreds the bill that would allow landlords who illegally deregulated apartments while taking tax breaks from the city to simply pay back their taxes and avoid further penalty. It would save landlords hundreds of millions of dollars, while tenants whose rents were illegally raised would lose their right, protected by a 2009 state appeals court ruling, to recover money. [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]

Some 44 percent of New Yorkers live in rented properties with five or
more units, according to the State of New York City’s 2010 Housing and
Neighborhoods report, released by NYU’s Furman Center for Real Estate
and Urban Policy today. The report indicates that more than 44,000 New York City households have been impacted by foreclosed multifamily
rental properties. “Renters in multi-family rental buildings
experience uncertainty or deteriorating living conditions when the
property they inhabit faces foreclosure,” the report said. Overall,
the number of foreclosures in New York City declined 15.9 percent to 16,911 between 2009 and 2010. TRD Comments