Commercial Real Estate Finance

Posts Tagged ‘Archstone’

Hint: Stuy-Town's not the biggest

Toward the end of last year, Jerry Ascierto of Apartment Finance Today published a list of the largest multi-family real estate transactions to have taken place in the ‘oughts.’  It’s no surprise that many of these deals were acquisitions of REIT assets considering few private owners own as many units as the large public companies.  The most interesting transaction in the list, in my opinion, is the #1 largest multi-family deal; not because of its size, but because the deal went through in spite of a collapsing CMBS market.  That deal was a harbinger of things to come.  When CMBS financing was unavailable, Fannie and Freddie stepped in to push the deal through.  Hmmm…that sounds like every other multi-family deal that has traded since then.

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Last week, a report surfaced announcing the return of Mark Walsh (former head of Lehman Brothers global real estate group) to what’s left of Lehman Brothers to take over the crappy portfolio he once amassed during his tenure there. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal:

“Mr. Walsh and a team of former Lehman colleagues are setting up a new stand-alone business to manage the private-equity [real estate] portfolio. They stand to profit if the portfolio of distressed assets — for which they once paid top dollar — recovers only some of its value.”

On the surface, this is about as dumb as asking Dick Cheney the rules of firearm safety, Robert Hinckley Jr. how to assassinate a President, George W. Bush where to find Osama Bin Laden, or Bill Clinton to turn down the advances of unattractive women. Many a joke have been made thus far regarding the news, including outdated Brokeback Mountain jokes (i.e. “Lehman: Mark Walsh, I just can’t quit you” etc).
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