real estate

  • 13 Jun 2013 at 5:49 PM

Goldman Made Some Preferred Stock Investors Sad

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How shady is this morning’s delightful Journal story about the travails of Equity Inns preferred stockholders? I think the answer is “just the right amount of shady,” but you might disagree. The gist is that Goldman Sachs real estate private equity funds bought out Equity Inns but left almost $150mm of preferred stock outstanding. Once ENN was no longer a public company (because Goldman owned all its common stock and it had fewer than 300 shareholders), it delisted its preferred stock and stopped providing public financial information.1 This saddened the preferred holders and they expressed their sadness by bidding down the price of the preferred to under 40 cents on the dollar.

Also by complaining to the company, and the SEC, and the Journal, and anyone else who will listen. Also by doing this:

One of the preferred shareholders is responding by creating 300 separate trusts to hold his preferred shares. He argues that should qualify the company for reporting.

Should it? I don’t know but I love it. You gotta fight silly formalism with silly formalism. Read more »

  • 22 Apr 2013 at 1:56 PM

If You’re Selling An Apartment In Manhattan, Just Call 203-890-2000 And Ask For Steve

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Perhaps you thought that hedge fund manager Steve Cohen’s recent need to indulge in a little retail therapy had been satisfied by the purchases of a $60 million Hamptons home and a $155 million painting. That dropping 200+ mill had made him feel better about certain things going on right now that are out of his control. That the bank was closed. Well you thought wrong! The East End house and the Picasso were apparently but a warm-up, which the Big Guy followed up by buying a building on Perry Street and, possibly, an apartment 6 blocks away. Read more »

  • 17 Apr 2013 at 5:03 PM

Sleep Where George Soros (‘s Son) Hath Slept

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Update: just kidding, you can’t– GS was the buyer, not the seller (we’ve been drinking).

It may not be your dream apartment but it does have some nice qualities, like 5,700 square feet and a rooftop basketball court. The younger Soros is asking for $12 million; make him an offer today before it’s promised to someone else. [Curbed via BI]

  • 08 Apr 2013 at 4:18 PM

Each Chapter Of ‘The Life And Times Of James Dimon’ Will Be Written In A Different Room

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Jamie Dimon, chairman and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, bought a commercial co-op unit in the base of his Manhattan apartment building for $2.05 million…The sellers of the commercial co-op were listed as Stephen Marks and George Ellis, cardiologists whose practice was located at the address. The unit is one of 11 on the ground floor of the building, located between 93rd and 94th Streets. “They’re professional offices” said Jonathan Miller, president of New York-based appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. “Most of the time it’s a doctor, a psychologist, any type of medical practice. It’s not uncommon for it to be a place to write a book, or just a place to work, or have a private office.” Maintenance is $6,663 a month for the 2,577-square-foot (239-square-meter) unit, which has 12 rooms and two half-baths. [Bloomberg]

  • 28 Mar 2013 at 12:53 PM

Steve Cohen Gives 215 Million (And Counting) Fingers To The Universe

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In the news this week you will find two stories of men soothing what ails them through extreme retail therapy: that of Friday Night Lights writer Buzz Bissinger, who confessed in the pages of GQ to spending over $600,000 at the House of Gucci in a leather fetish/bondage binge that resulted in him coming to own ‘eighty-one leather jackets, seventy-five pairs of boots, forty-one pairs of leather pants, thirty-two pairs of haute couture jeans, ten evening jackets, and 115 pairs of leather gloves’ and Steve Cohen, who will not be held down by SEC fines topping half a billion dollars or bulls-eyes on his back. On Tuesday it was reported that the SAC Capital founder had picked up Picasso’s Le Rêve for $155 million as “a gift to himself” and now he’s got a place to put it:

Mr. Cohen reached a deal last week to pay $60 million for an oceanfront property on Further Lane in East Hampton, on Long Island, according to a person with direct knowledge of the sale. The home, which was listed for sale late last week, is down the road from one he already owns.

And while there was supposedly a real need to buy the second Hamptons house (the first one does not have an ocean view, being obstructed by Jim Chanos’s manse), and Le Rêve is nice to look at, he could have bought the house and painting at any time. These purchases were clearly one part “pick-me-up,” two parts “fuck all y’all.” Which raises the question: Read more »

  • 22 Mar 2013 at 12:14 PM

Who Wants To Own Trading Floors In New York And Kansas City? OK, How About New York?

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The future home of the world’s largest rib joint?

As a consequence of its recent shopping spree, the CME Group finds itself a landlord. But the CME Group is not a REIT—so it’s got some square feet to sell, starting with the NYMEX’s Battery Park City home. Read more »

  • 18 Mar 2013 at 5:07 PM

Someone Please (Please?!) Buy Tim Geithner’s House

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Curbed reports the former treasury secretary has listed his 2,537 square foot Bethesda home, purchased when he took the Washington gig, for $995,000. Read more »

  • 20 Feb 2013 at 5:26 PM

Sleep Where John Mack Hath Slept

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Curbed reports the former Morgan Stanley CEO has put his Upper East Side manse on the market. For $22.5 million you’ll get 4 bedrooms, a solarium, and a strange desire to tell Tim Geithner to go fuck himself. [Curbed]

  • 13 Feb 2013 at 4:51 PM

Alpine Climes Are the Perfect Habitat for Real-Estate Bubbles

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Foreigners keep pouring (their money) into Switzerland, partying like it’s 2007, and the powers that be can’t seem to do a thing about it. But they’re trying. Read more »

  • 12 Feb 2013 at 4:54 PM

Prominent Former Bank Still Wheeling and Dealing

By Jon Shazar

Lehman Brothers’ former Manhattan headquarters is now unmistakably the New York base of an even more discredited (if still solvent) bank. But the bankrupt if lucrative shell of a company still owns a big midtown building—one that it took over two years after it filed for bankruptcy. Now, it’s unloading it for a song. Read more »

  • 06 Feb 2013 at 4:43 PM

Ken Lewis’s Great Idea Pad Sells For $3.15 Million

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They said it couldn’t be done. They said it didn’t matter if it was $4.5 million or $2.5 million or if they were giving it away. They said potentials buyers wouldn’t be swayed by the pitch to “sleep where Angelo Mozilo hath slept, after a few too many troughs of Boone’s farm” (AKA “The Mozilo Bedroom”), or to impress guests with the cocktail party fodder that “that chair you’re sitting in right now the very one Ken Lewis was sitting in when he decided to buy Merrill Lynch, can’t get better investing karma than that.” They said the vomit stains on the rug would not be a selling point. They were wrong. Read more »