Record $5.4B NYC Apartment Complex Lost to Creditors

The record-setting sale of a New York residential property for $5.4 billion in 2006 was a deal made at the height of the boom—and it's now a casualty of the collapsed real estate market. Tishman Speyer, the property company that bought the 56-building, 11,000-unit Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town apartment complexes in Manhattan four years ago, is handing the debt-laden property over to creditors, the Wall Street Journal reports.

A weak New York economy that has battered apartment rents and occupancy levels has left Tishman, whose other properties include Rockefeller Center and the Chrysler Building, unable to carry Stuyvesant Town's massive debt load. By some measures, the property is valued at just $1.8 billion now, bad news for equity investors like California Public Employees' Retirement System and the Church of England, who will likely see most of their investment wiped out; Tishman, capitalizing on eager investors and easy credit, put only $112 million in the complex.
(More Tishman Speyer Properties stories.)