"All Those Little Stuyvesant Towns"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/31gret.html Looks like we could be seeing a number of Stuytown-esque deals come down in the next few months. "Stuyvesant Town is a high-profile deal, to be sure. But there were many others like it in the mania, struck by lesser-known companies with private equity backing. They bought rent-regulated apartments in Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx. Some of... [more]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/31/business/31gret.html Looks like we could be seeing a number of Stuytown-esque deals come down in the next few months. "Stuyvesant Town is a high-profile deal, to be sure. But there were many others like it in the mania, struck by lesser-known companies with private equity backing. They bought rent-regulated apartments in Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx. Some of these deals are now vulnerable, too. When the transactions took place several years ago, private equity chiefs were riding high. Loading debt onto the companies they bought, managers dismissed workers, cut customer services and sold off assets to pay themselves and their investors and to meet their debt payments. The private equity firms took a similar approach to rental apartments. But instead of dumping workers, they hoped to jettison low-revenue renters so their units could be renovated and leased out at much higher prices. Private equity firms have financed the purchase of 100,000 units of rent-regulated housing across New York City since 2005, according to the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, a coalition of nonprofit housing groups in New York. These owners account for almost 10 percent of the city’s rent-regulated housing." [less]