Adam Neumann could be on the cusp of his most audacious development undertaking yet.

In June, Israeli business publication Calcalist reported that Cypriot-Israeli billionaire Yakir Gabay was stepping into River District, the 4M sf megaproject conceived by Joseph Chetrit of the Chetrit Group. Gabay, through his firm Yellowstone, agreed to pay $350M to buy out Chetrit and take over the project, which is expected to stretch over 2 city blocks along the Miami River.

Now, The Promote has learned that Gabay is close to bringing in Flow, Neumann’s splashy a16z-backed new multifamily venture, as a partner on the project.

The exact capstack is still being worked out, according to sources familiar w/ the matter, and the Gabay/Chetrit purchase is yet to close. Chetrit had scored $340M in financing ($30M mezz, $310M construction loan) from Madison Realty Capital for the project’s first phase, a 54-story, 632-unit mixed-use building. Chetrit hoped to build a 52-story tower as part of the 2nd phase of the project, but the firm’s portfolio-wide struggles have been well-documented. Gabay then swooped in; it remains unclear if he and Flow will proceed w/ the Madison debt or seek fresh financing. It’s also TBD if the partners will stick to the original Chetrit plans – $1B project w/ 1,600 resi units, 30K sf of retail, office space, a marina ⛵ – or modify them.

Flow, which more than doubled its valuation to $2.5B this spring, has
been partnering on its Miami MSA development projects w/ Canada Global, a vehicle operated by Asaf Touchmair and Barak Rosen in which Flow took a 30% stake last fall. The partners won approval for a 3-tower, 675-unit Aventura undertaking in May and scored financing to redevelop a former trailer park in El Portal.

On some of its early, peak-ZIRP multifamily acquisitions in Atlanta & Nashville, Flow has struggled, seeking rescue pref, as The Promote reported in May. But for Neumann, such capstack pains are merely pesky footnotes; he has always figured out a way to get paid.

An intriguing series of transactions over at one of syndicatorland’s most under-pressure lenders: Over several purchases in late June and July, entities controlled by investor Howard Amster have picked up just under 9M shares (for ≈$54M) in Ready Capital, new SEC disclosures show. Amster has a history of amassing positions in challenged companies, and Ready’s struggles are well-documented: Its share price is down 54% over the past year, and this week it reported a $54M loss in Q2.

Ready deals in “static securities,” making it less nimble in addressing problem deals and requiring it to score a special servicer’s approval to modify loans. Last year, CEO Thomas Capasse blamed “late cycle stress” in multifamily for troubles in his $6.6B CRE CLO book; Ready has been a prolific lender to troubled syndicators Tides Equities and GVA. It has been unloading much of its distressed multifamily loan book at big discounts (50-70 cents on the dollar in some cases). In March, it closed on the $181M acquisition of SFR lender United Development Funding IV.

Here we go. Greystar, the country’s largest multifamily landlord and manager of close to 950K units, has reached a settlement w/ the DoJ over its use of algorithmic rent-setting in the RealPage antitrust saga.

“American greatness has always depended on free-market competition, and nowhere is competition more important than in making housing affordable again,” AG Pam Bondi said. The settlement requires Greystar to refrain from using any rent pricing software that uses competitor/nonpublic data and to stop swapping notes w/ competitors on rental data. It also requires Greystar to cooperate in the govt’s actions against RealPage. Greystar isn’t the first to settle in this matter; Cortland had reached a similar deal w/ the DoJ back in January, when the DoJ named the big landlords as defendants in its antitrust case. Greystar also announced that it had a tentative settlement in place w/ renters who had filed a class-action suit against it.

Let’s see which other big landlords now fall in line. Also tracking the DoJ actions against RealPage’s main rival, Yardi.

The Promote has devoted barrels of digital ink to covering Traveling HFCs, the Texas property-tax forgiveness loophole that became a refuge for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of distressed (and good deals that became great) multifamily deals, while providing v new affordable housing. (If you’re new to these pages or need a refresher, start here, then here, then here & here, and def. check out the deep dive in the pod here.) In May, Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law HB21, the nuclear bill that sought to not merely kill Traveling HFCs but also retroactively smack them around. That retroactivity component cast a shadow over the Texas market and threw up broader Qs about the sanctity of markets, and there’s been furious behind-the-scenes jockeying to address it. Now, we’re seeing the fruits of that frenzied labor: Rep. Gary Gates, one of the authors of HB21, has proposed a new framework for bringing existing projects into compliance w/ the law, according to a late July later reviewed by The Promote. Key deets