Developer who is in default

If you have a particular building in mind, the loan agreements will be on ACRIS and are interesting reading.

The new owner (the lender) would take over from the developer re: deposits, figuring out what to do with the property, etc.

Individual developers (the people) are pretty well protected from being personally hit by any one building and its LLC defaulting.

can you give me a little direction on how to navigate ACRIS? I can't seem to find the loan agreements.

I'm not sure you'll find the complete loan agreements on ACRIS. What you will find is the recorded mortgage docs...which are part of the financing but all of it.
Maybe the condo prospectus?
Reading a loan agreement is going to be slow going. The general deal is Lender calls default and uses threat of foreclosure to hammer developer to the extent possible (get him to put more money into the project, provide additional collateral, etc...) and then the fun begins.
As a contract buyer, you should consult with an attorney if you're thinking this might be a good time to try and cancel your purchase committment....I would think a default called against the builder would give you an out but I don't know for sure

which are part of the financing but NOT all of it

Could Street Easy please provide for some post editing features?

On this note - how do you find out if a default is called on the developer by their lender? doesn't seem like this information is public record

newguy97, as an example, take the new building going up at Broadway and 76th. Block 1167, lot 40. That gives you the developer's name, "7th and Broadway Owner LLC". Doing a name search on "76th and Broadway" turns up both lots, 40 and 37, and the three mortgages. Pick any one of the 40-page docs to take a look at.

If you don't have a good address, use NY City Map, right at nyc.gov, to find the parcel and get its block/lot numbers.

Right mjsalisb, what's recorded is only what's required to cover the lender's butt. Lots of other stuff that'd be useful isn't recorded because it doesn't have to be. The condo declaration is there, but the prospectus would be even more interesting.

Fortunately a potential buyer has access to a lot of non-filed info, like the prospectus, that the merely curious wouldn't bother tracking down.

Superquant....I don't think you're going to find public records of default notices (and remember, a borrower can be in default in a minor way...didn't get the right kind of insurance he promised etc) but if things are getting ugly, a lender will file what's known as a "lis pendens" which puts the world on notice that the mortgage is sufficiently in default that a foreclosure is threatened.
I'm pretty sure ACRIS has these somewhere....and for sure Property Shark makes a nice business out of selling lists of lis pendens to real estate types.
For any developments of size, there's also a good chance your friends at Real Deal or Curbed will get word via the (expanding) grapevine if a project is about to get the rug pulled out.

And remember, the last thing a lender actually wants to do with a big condo development is put it through foreclosure....kiss of death for sales. Generally some kind of out of court workout deal is reached if at all possible