Two Trees Management has secured $229 million in construction financing for the second phase of its massive Mercedes House development on the Far West Side, according to Morrison & Foerster, the law firm that represented lenders Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase in the deal.

About 60 percent of the loan comes from proceeds of bonds issued by the New York State Housing Finance Agency which will fund about 480 units, 100 of which are reserved for low-income households. The remainder will finance 162 residential condominium units. – Adam Fusfeld [more]

Courtyard at the Apthorp

Following months of legal maneuvering, a state Supreme Court judge has ruled that Anglo Irish Bank can finally sell the troubled mortgage loan backed by the Apthorp condominium on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.

Judge Jeffrey Oing issued an order Nov. 29 finally allowing Anglo Irish Bank to move ahead with the sale of the $385 million mortgage loan to Dallas-based Lone Star Funds, but sources familiar with the negotiations say a final agreement was still being worked out to complete the deal.

The Apthorp loan, which has a remaining balance of $225 million. just before the suit was filed Sept. 13, was one of the largest in a group of $5 billion in troubled loans to be acquired by Lone Star. Anglo agreed to sell its entire $9.5 billion U.S. portfolio after the Irish government took over the troubled lender and agreed to sell off all of its non-core holdings around the world. JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo agreed to buy the remaining tranche of performing loans. [more]

New York Commercial Real Estate Women’s winter holiday gala and 10th anniversary celebration was held last night at the Upper East Side’s Columbus Townhouse — headquarters of the Columbus Citizens’ Foundation, a non-profit that advances Italian-American heritage and achievement.

Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of retail leasing and sales for Prudential Douglas Elliman, a director for NYCREW and star of the soon-to-premiere television show “What’s Cooking in Real Estate?” greeted more than 100 guests with her signature blunt sense of humor. She joked that attendees were only there “so they could stay married,” hinting that the more time they spend away from their spouses, the better, drawing earnest chuckles from the almost uniformly female crowd. [more]

The price lenders must pay to move past the federal investigation into their foreclosure practices went up by $5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. And it could rise higher.

The ongoing negotiations between government officials and banks, which appeared close to being finalized in September at a cost of $20 billion to the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers, have centered on a new number: $25 billion. The final cost could eventually reach $29 billion.

The lenders in question are Ally Financial, Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo [more]

Anglo Irish Bank protestFrom the October issue: The auction of Anglo Irish Bank’s troubled $9.5 billion U.S. loan portfolio has surprised some industry observers — and spread fear among some borrowers, who worry about having new lenders take over their troubled projects.

Ben Thypin, a senior market analyst at Real Capital Analytics, said the fact that three lenders divvied up Anglo Irish’s portfolio was” not particularly unexpected.”

“No one but a bank could really afford to buy the performing loans, so the performers and non performers inevitably went to different buyers,” he said.

But what was surprising was who ended up at the winners’ table — Lone Star Funds acquired about $5 billion in sub- and nonperforming loans, while Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase acquired the remaining performing loans in separate transactions.
[more]

Anglo Irish Bank said in a court filing yesterday that the developers of the Apthorp condominium, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, gave the lender the right to sell the property’s $385 million mortgage to a third-party by waiving a “no-assignment” clause in the loan agreement, and later defaulted on the loan by failing to meet sales targets.

The Apthorp developers, led by billionaire Lev Leviev’s Africa Israel USA, filed suit in state Supreme Court earlier this month asking a judge to block the sale of the loan to Dallas-based Lone Star Funds, claiming the transfer would threaten the viability of the project by creating uncertainty in the market, which would cut into sales.

Anglo Irish is selling the debt as part of a massive restructuring to exit the U.S. commercial real estate market. The lender is selling its entire $9.5 billion American commercial loan portfolio, and the Apthorp loan sale is part of a $5 billion sale of nonperforming and sub-performing loans to Loan Star. [more]

Ordinary victims of the mortgage crisis say that the big banks which
received large financial bailouts under the Bush and Obama
administrations are not doing enough to help them, even as the companies are recording
significant profits, the New York Times reported, with government
officials divided on taking a harder line. Mimi Pierre Johnson, a
real estate agent, and her husband, a construction worker, had bought a
four-bedroom home in Elmont, on Long Island, for $413,000 in 2005. But
when the recession took hold, her husband lost his construction job,
her real estate business dropped off and they began having trouble making their
mortgage payments. Her bank, JPMorgan Chase, gave her a temporary loan modification, but then canceled it. “I’m a
realtor; I know I’m doomed,” Johnson said. “But I want to say to
Chase, ‘Hello!? The government gave you a bailout to help people like
me.’” [more]

New York judges are beginning to take a stricter interpretation of the “good faith effort” banks are required to make under a 2009 state law passed to offer support to distressed homeowners, according to the New York Daily News.

The law states that banks must try to negotiate with distressed homeowners so that they can modify the loans and keep their property. But those homeowners are increasingly complaining that they can’t get modifications. Since November, 2009 judges have found at least seven cases where banks, including Wells Fargo, HSBC, Bank of America and Deutsche Bank, failed to act in good faith, and in one case the judge ordered the mortgage debt wiped out (although that was later reversed by an appeals court). [more]

More than 2,200 mortgage-related jobs have been lost through the first half of the year, according to the MortgageDaily.com’s second quarter Mortgage Employment Index released today. In the second quarter there were 4,940 hires and 5,404 layoffs, for a net of 464 lost jobs. That’s a marked improvement over the 1,805 jobs lost in the first quarter of 2011, but far worse than the 740 jobs gained during the second quarter of 2010. As of June there were 239,100 mortgage jobs in the U.S., according to a separate Department of Labor report. –Adam Fusfeld [more]

From left: Anglo Irish buildings the Apthorp in New York and the
Mandarin Oriental in Boston

Private equity firms Lone Star Funds, Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase have triumphed in the battle for Anglo Irish Bank’s $9.5 billion portfolio of U.S. commercial real estate loans, sources told the Wall Street Journal. Lone Star took pools of non-performing and sub-performing loans worth around $5 billion, while Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase are to purchase pools of performing loans, worth $3 billion to $3.5 billion and $1 billion to $1.5 billion respectively.
Anglo Irish reportedly raised an amount within its broker’s early price guidance of $7 billion to $8 billion, the Journal said.

The sales are expected to close in October. The offering includes loans backed buildings from Manhattan — including the Apthorp at 390 West End Avenue — to Beverly Hills, Calif. Wells Fargo also won an auction for Bank of Ireland’s $1.4 billion U.S. commercial real estate loan portfolio, earlier this month. [WSJ]