The largest real estate deal ever has failed. The question is, what’s next?

On Monday, January 25, 2010 — Tishman Speyer BlackRock, one of America’s largest commercial property owners, threw in the towel.

They sent their $5.3 billion investment in 11,000 apartments in New York back to their bankers – the same way some homeowners are mailing their keys back to lenders.

The Tishman Speyer move involved two massive middle-class housing developments in Manhattan: Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village. The two complexes, consisting of 56 buildings, had been purchased in 2006 from MetLife. Since then, residents of both complexes had mounted intense legal and political opposition to Tishman Speyer’s attempt to raise rents and evict longstanding tenants.

The problems at Tishman Speyer, some analysts believe, are “symptomatic” of commercial real estate problems around the United States.

Tags: Real Estate Defaults

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