Monday, January 25, 2010

As Worthless As Beads...

The owners of the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Apartments in Manhattan who paid $5.4 Billion for the complex back in 2006 have announced that they are turning them over to creditors.

The housing complexes were built by MetLife in the mid-1940's to accommodate returning GI's. MetLife sold the property to Tishman Speyer and Blackrock equity partners in 2006 at the height of the real estate boom. The partners each invested $112 million out of a total equity financing of $1.9 billion. They also took out a $3 billion mortgage from Wachovia Bank, which was promptly packaged and re-sold with other commercial property loans and as securities.

And just who owns these securities? Bloomberg reports that the largest holders are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Ouch.

2 comments:

B. Frank said...

Wait a minute, beads are NOT worthless. In fact, my boy toy (who works at Fannie Mae) and I call ours "Fannie Beads".

Do you think you might find a better simile to describe this corporate greed that the Bush administration and out of control Wall Street CEOs foisted upon Main Street? One that doesn't homophobicly malign a valuable staple of a healthy man-man love story?

Anonymous said...

The underlying message here to the "underwater" American homeowner is that it is OK to walk away from the house. If these Corporations can do it, why not J. Average American?

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