Commercial Real Estate Finance

Archive for January 1st, 2013

Mensch:

Noun, informal. A decent, upright, mature and responsible person.

Schlemiel:

Noun, slang. An awkward, clumsy, or unlucky person whose endeavors tend to fail; a loser.

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Mensch of the Week:

Archstone Apartments

Happy New Year! Yesterday, in the retrospective spirit that sweeps the Internet and media around this time, I named my Top 12 Stories from the Commercial Real Estate World in 2012. Though we’re now in 2013, I’m nonetheless compelled to revisit one of these high-profile news items, but this time with a twist.

Our Mensch of the Week (and it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to make it our Mensch of the Year) is Denver-based apartment REIT Archstone, which has been viewed as something of a holy grail among multifamily investors since 2011, when we first began to see a fierce, seemingly interminable battle for the firm between two investment giants: Sam Zell’s Equity Residential (NYSE: EQR) and Lehman Brothers.

While this may not have been the most significant news story in the commercial real estate world, it’s certainly been one of the most interesting thanks to its many twists and turns. Here’s a brief summary (in the form of a 5^th grade word problem): Read the rest of this entry »