Is everyone FINALLY back from the holidays? 🍋 Ok, good, let’s go. 

On Wednesday, subscribers to The Promote Insider got to dive deeper into how Banco Santander has been playing rough wrt a $9B rent-regulated loan book it snapped up from the 💀 of Signature Bank. If this sounds like your jam, you can sign up for premium and read it here.

Today, we take a closer look at New York’s largest commercial landlord, SL Green. It’s been a monstrously productive year for the Marc Holliday-led REIT, which is showcasing the full spectrum of its very particular set of skills: big-ticket leasing, courting foreign institutional money, distressed-debt investing, speedy heists of development sites, scoring beautifully cheap debt, even an uncanny Terry Benedict impression. Though Wall Street still won’t give it 💌 - the stock is down 28% over the past year – there are plenty of wins from a CRE perspective, a couple painful losses, and heaps to take away for those aspiring to the highest levels of this game. 👇

“The ‘We’ is the darkest. Not even ‘I.’”
“If it is Athene, it's Athene negotiating with Athene, which is going to be a good time.”

This week on the pod, we ask the taboo Q about New York office-to-resi conversions. Do the numbers work? With all the private-credit billions flowing into the space, there's been enough distress from some of the OGs, including Nathan Berman, that the question is warranted. We then look at how one man, Zara founder Amancio Ortega, can drive pricing across CRE product types and markets – even though his buys may not really be motivated by real-world investment metrics. And finally, we have some real talk about fathers & sons - the allegations against David Bren, the embattled son of Irvine Cos. tycoon Donald Bren, require a dialogue about fundraising, short-cutting trust, and the weight of a family name.

Listen on Spotify here, YouTube here or Apple Podcasts here. Brands: To get in front of our obsessed audience of CRE insiders, reach out here.

Developers hoping to do a condo buyout (big thing in the Miami MSA nowadays) in Edgewater have been dealt a legal body blow in a long-running battle: Florida’s Supreme Court refused to re-hear Two Roads Development (James Harpel)’s case on the buyout at the site of the former Biscayne 21 condo, where Two Roads hopes to build an Edition Residences. The suit was over an amendment of the condo declaration that would lower the requirement for a condo termination to 80% of owners, from 100%. The victory led one of the holdouts to give TRD one of the most unhinged quotes we’ve ever read in this business. Trigger warning ⚠

“I’m happy in the way a rape victim might feel happy when the jury comes back with a guilty verdict,” said condo owner Robert Murphy. “There’s a measure of satisfaction that justice has been done, but you still live with the rape.”

The court’s cold shoulder means Two Roads is out of options – the firm’s interest on loans related to the bulk purchase ($105M sr. from Bank OZK, $45M mezz from a Fisher Brothers affiliate) is ratcheting up ⏳ And it puts ?? on other attempted buyouts where developer-controlled condo boards may try to rejig termination thresholds.

Impossible to capture all the data-center mania of the past week in a single ed. Instead, flagging some notable nuggets

No one had as much to lose from the Covid-era rout of New York’s office market as SL Green. And no one has taken as much delight in its recent resurgence, w/ Manhattan net absorption at its highest levels in a quarter-century, sites of office towers hotly contested, and foreign investors willing to pay $2,700/ 🦶 😶‍🌫 to own a piece of the very best (i.e. One Vandy) single-malt towers ™. “As the Wall Street Journal reported just this week, the New York office is roaring back,” Marc Holliday said on Thursday’s earnings call, the smugness pulsating through the line. And the REIT did indeed have much to be chuffed about, casino rout notwithstanding: Its leasing team led by vet Steve Durels has filled up over 1.9M sf YTD. Its investment team led by cherubic wunderkind Harrison Sitomer has been on an acquisitions tear, and pulled off an astonishingly lucrative distressed-debt maneuver on Fifth Ave. And the debt markets have been v receptive to the REIT’s demands. Let’s take a closer look - Good, Meh, and Ugly style