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The Daily Dirt: No winner yet for Signature’s stabilized loans 

FDIC has not yet awarded the portfolio, despite report about a top contender

The future of Signature’s rent-stabilized loans are still uncertain: The Daily Dirt
(Getty)

Signature’s loans are going, going…still going.

A little more than eight months ago, Signature Bank collapsed. Since then we’ve wondered who on Earth would buy its $33 billion loan portfolio, especially its rent-stabilized debt.

Unless you live under a rock or somehow do not care about a failed bank’s loan portfolio, you probably know that Related Fund Management has emerged as a likely buyer of these loans.

But my colleague Suzannah Cavanaugh reports that higher bids came in and could still be in the running. Related and its two nonprofit partners only bid on a third of the debt, so other parties could scoop up the remaining $10 billion in loans.

Related’s bid was less than 70 cents of the loans’ face value, but the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation is also looking to “maximize the preservation of the availability and affordability” of housing. That’s where Related’s nonprofit partners, the Community Preservation Corporation and Neighborhood Restore, come in.

The groups may help manage the properties if the owners default, according to the Wall Street Journal. Neighborhood Restore is accustomed to doing just that through the city’s third-party transfer program, in which the city seizes properties that owe taxes or fees and transfers them to a new owner who renovates and maintains the property as stabilized housing.

Neighborhood Restore serves as the intermediary for the city in that program, taking over the immediate management needs of a property before control is transferred to its new owner. It is a controversial program that has been on ice for the past few years, and the Adams administration is still trying to figure out how to revive it, along with the city’s lien sale.

Perhaps in the meantime, the nonprofit will wind up working in buildings that it would have otherwise received as part of third-party transfer.

What we’re thinking about: How often do you use AI in your day-to-day job? Send a note to kathryn@therealdeal.com. Today I used it to translate dozens of pages of financial documents into English to search for very specific information. None of it was very useful, but I had fun.

A thing we’ve learned: The century-old Eltingville Lutheran Church on Staten Island was demolished this month to make way for 20, two-family homes. Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards and his wife, Patti Hansen, nearly got married in the church in December 1982, the Staten Island Advance reports. Thank you to James H. Thomson for passing this along, and for sharing this observation: “Those who bet on the rock-n-roll marriage outlasting the church have won.”

Programming note: The Daily Dirt will take a Thanksgiving break, returning Monday, Nov. 27. Enjoy the holiday!

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Elsewhere in New York…

— The Department of Housing Preservation and Development launched a pilot program to allow city homeowners to build accessory dwelling units in their single-family homes. The catch: The units must abide by local zoning and building codes (so don’t expect many basement apartment conversions), and the program is only expected to fund 15 ADUs. Homeowners will be eligible if they make up to 165 percent of the area median income — $186,450 for a two-person household. The pilot will offer up to $395,000 per household in a combination of city and state funding.

— Billionaire John Catsimatidis has one word for you: pandas. The Red Apple Group CEO thinks bringing the bears to NYC would help the local economy and ease tensions with China, Gothamist reports. Catsimatidis, who did not have a suggestion for where the pandas could be held, made the suggestion after China demanded that three pandas be returned from the National Zoo in Washington. Former Rep. Carolyn Maloney has long advocated for pandas to be brought to New York.

Closing Time

Residential: The priciest residential closing Tuesday was $17.5 million for a condo at 137 Duane Street in Tribeca.

Commercial: The most expensive commercial closing of the day was $11 million for a unit at 1295 Madison Avenue in Carnegie Hill.

New to the Market: The priciest residence to hit the market Wednesday was a co-op at 1010 Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side asking $7 million. Douglas Elliman has the listing.

Breaking Ground: The largest new building filing of the day was for a 3,800-square-foot, two-family home at 136-32 58th Road, Flushing. HiRise Contracting filed the permit application. — Jay Young 

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