Good vibes @ Reserve Cut last night 🥩: Buzz about a rare Fannie license (Mechanics/HomeStreet) in play, w/ JPM shopping it. Word from CMA is that Dwight (the Sasouness Bros), Bravo (Aaron Krawitz) and Capital Funding Group bid for it, while we hear chatter that Flagstar, Santander & BoFa may also be in the mix. These licenses are highly coveted – only 25 out there – and per CMA the pricing being teased is $100M+. The last one that traded was when Benefit Street Partners bought NewPoint for $425M (anatomy of that deal here & chat w/ Comparato here) but that one came w/ hella MSRs + Freddie & HUD licenses. We chatted w/ Phil Rosen, the retired Weil power lawyer who’s now a lone 🐺, and also spotted an agency dealmaker posse, incl. DUSty Dan Sacks.

This week, we chat 2 big events in senior housing: Blackstone’s fire sale of a $1.8B portfolio and the Sonida-CNL merger. A pretty gnarly space to operate in, but lots of room for creative structuring. Next, we look at the behind-the-scenes wrangling at one of Brooklyn’s buzziest projects: Jonathan Landau is attempting to build Brooklyn Heights’ tallest condo, but has a quarter-billion dollar hole to fill. And finally, BXP is cashing in on legacy assets to fund its development pipeline. Supertalls ain’t cheap!

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New York landlords have tried a smorgasbord of legal tactics to fight back against what many of them see as draconian rent-stabilization laws, laws they believe have turned that asset class from a money-printer into a money pit (Catch up here & here for the damage). The latest attempt zeroes in on vacancy control, which they argue amounts to an unconstitutional “taking.” Filed Wednesday, the suit argues that the current state of play – which tightly restricts rent increases even when an apt. is vacated by a RS tenant – disincentivizes landlords from investing in their buildings.

It flags how due to their individual tenant histories, 2 identical apts in the same building (way up in Wash. Hts in this case) can have wildly different legal rent limits – $5K+ versus < $1K. “These selective and arbitrary rent caps on vacant units are not helping any tenant,” the suit argues. “To the contrary, they are keeping units off the market.” Defendants incl. the city, the RGB and individual members, and DHCR Commish RuthAnne Visnauskas. Worth diving into👇

It had been almost a year in Fannie limbo, but Abe Bergman finally had the opportunity to deliver his team some good news Wed: The agency had removed Eastern Union from its restricted vendor list, and the prolific mortgage shop was once again free to do deals. “Having gone through this process, and nobody here in the company was questioned on any of their actions, so that says a lot about all of you,” Bergman said in a company all-hands soon after the ban was lifted (The Promote reviewed the tape.)

“Congrats! Mazel tov, mazel tov baby!” one jubilant staffer interjected, toasting w/ a whiskey 🥃

Eastern was blacklisted in Dec., and at the time Bergman said he suspected it was due to actions by former Eastern brokers who went on to found Lakewood-based Sevenstone Capital; TBD on Sevenstone’s fate. "BH the core values are always there and it is with [gratitude] to Hashem that not only did we get back on but they didn't ask us to replace or let go of any broker," Eastern co-founder Ira Zlotowitz (now CEO of Gparency) wrote in a popular industry Whatsapp chat, where The Promote’s tweet breaking the news was making the rounds 🛀 After a sweeping crackdown in ‘23 and ‘24 by the agencies that saw several prominent title firms, appraisers, and mortgage brokerages put in the penalty box over concerns of mortgage fraud, this year has seen many of them being cleared for business: BBG got reinstated by Freddie in June; Meridian Capital Group by Freddie in Jan. & Madison Title by Fannie in June. The absurd backdrop to all this is that Fannie watchdogs who were looking into potentially improper actions by FHFA director Bill Pulte 🩳 were themselves canned, per WSJ. If you live in glass houses…