“You think I have time to ask a man why he givin' me money, or where he gets his money from?” - Clay Davis, RIP 🙏

In October, Mayweather’s corner (Ayal Frist, cutman?) took to TRD to announce the HoF boxer’s NYC multifamily megadeal: A $400M+ Upper Manhattan portfolio buy from Black Spruce’s Josh Gotlib. This was the kind of transaction that shakes up a market, given both the size and the personality involved. Was Mayweather about to pull an Amancio Ortega and juice prices all over the city? The following month, Mayweather announced that he had kicked $100M of equity into a $3B Manhattan luxury rental portfolio owned by GO Partners, a Black Spruce/ Meyer Orbach JV.

In May, BI poked serious holes in those reports (and by extension, in a similar one in Bloomberg), noting that a key nonprofit involved in the Upper Manhattan deal had not been alerted to any ownership change and that there was no proof of a sale in city records. TRD then doubled down w/ a story titled “Mayweather did do $402M deal — here’s the fine print and upside.” It now framed the deal as a minority purchase w/ an option to take full control, but that, as we said during all the drama, is NOT the same thing as buying a portfolio. (Side note for media nerds: This is one of the perils of buy-side in-contract scoops; you’re relying on an unreliable narrator for deets that can’t be independently confirmed until months later.)

In the background on many of these moves was a guy of great interest to NY CRE players: Jona Rechnitz. On the pod in May (Apple here, Spotify here), we dove into Rechnitz’s bizarre character arc: he went from a NYC political macher (got Lev Leviev a 👮 escort all the way to his 🛩) to a high-profile cooperating witness in a major corruption trial, to a 💎 dealer to the stars, to a Mayweather whisperer, the fixer on many of his splashy deals. "When your career is over, you got to make smart decisions," Mayweather said on Fox in Feb. "A close friend of mine, Jona Rechnitz — great guy, great person — helped me a lot." The Rechnitz connection explains why a lot of Mayweather’s focus was on a motley crew of Orthodox CRE players, incl. 601W Cos. (Harry Skydell, Mark Karasick), and also why one can spot the boxer breaking flatbread at Reserve Cut.

But if Rechnitz is involved, there’s more than a puncher’s chance that things will not be as they seem 👇

On Xmas Eve, subscribers to The Promote Insider got the definitive tick-tock of 520 Fifth Ave, where Mickey Rabina is set to make out like a bandit. This tale includes air-rights jujitsu, jilted sponsors, fast & loose Chinese capital, a sudden death, foreclosure threats, a rescue recap, prairie money, and the beautiful dance that is Manhattan luxury sales. From a pure basis:return standpoint, it is one of the better deals of the cycle, and if you want to understand exactly what it took, sign up for Insider and read it here.

BI has dropped a new banger on Mayweather’s tangled financial web: multimillion-dollar mortgages, lawsuits & liens, and a string of CRE deals that haven’t quite been consummated. On the GO Partners deal, for e.g., it reports that Mayweather put in a “nominal” sum and his equity (presumably, NOT $100M) was later absorbed by GO. (This btw is the portfolio that eventually went public via an UPREIT on the TSX 🍁 - a fascinating maneuver we broke down here). On the Upper Manhattan deal, there is still no record that Mayweather (via Vada Properties) has taken control of the portfolio – and don’t hold your breath. Mayweather has also lost 2 other properties to foreclosure, and is at risk of losing another in Vegas. And then there’s the Don Hankey cameo: Starting in ‘24, per BI, the billionaire 👑 of subprime car loans gave the pugilist $54M (at 9%) for various ventures, backed (and partially x-collateralized) by Mayweather’s extensive portfolio of luxe homes, a strip club, and a jet.

It was Rechnitz who made the Hankey connect for Mayweather, per BI.

“I’ve always been a risk taker,” Mayweather said this past May on a panel titled "Real Estate Knockout: The Floyd Mayweather strategy." He added that “it’s paid off great thus far,” and referred to Rechnitz as “one of the key pieces to the puzzle.” Rechnitz is set to be re-sentenced in the federal corruption case in Jan. And we’ll see how Mayweather navigates the debt from Hankey - the man is quite comfortable enforcing his contracts (see Niami, Nile)

If only he’d talk: Morris Betesh’s Arrow was listed on the $400M deal tombstone AND signed for the buyer entity on Mayweather’s Miami Beach manse sale 🤔

We’ve splashed some ink on the potential impact of a Zohran Mamdani administration on the NYC market (See here, here, and on the pod here). But we were mostly holding back until the man actually took office – an administration, after all, is often an Etch A Sketch from a campaign. In Mamdani’s case, however, Day 1 vibes do not bode well. “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” the mayor said during his inaugural address. From CRE’s perspective, not even Stephen King could have written a more terrifying line.

Obv, the mayor has legal guardrails around what he can and cannot do wrt CRE impact, and in presumptive City Council Speaker Julie Menin (married to Crescent Heights principal Bruce Menin) the industry has a welcome counterweight to his most radical policies. Eric Adams also knocked out (not killed, mind you) COPA on the eve of his departure for whatever adventures ( 🥃 , 🚬 ) are next. But Mamdani can still do a LOT: On Thursday, he named industry boogeywoman Cea Weaver to a key tenant-protection role. And he is also wading into one of the city’s largest rent-stabilized bankruptcy cases, involving Joel Wiener’s Pinnacle Group. Mamdani, speaking at a Flatbush building owned by Pinnacle, said he will direct city attorneys to intervene in the case (You gotta feel for Eastdil’s Daniel Parker).

As things stand, a stalking- 🐴 bid of just $451M has been submitted by Zohar Levy’s Summit Properties USA (big player in Germany, came here in ‘21). That equates to an astonishingly low $88K / 🚪, but obv that beautiful basis is subject to serious regulatory roulette, as evidenced by 👆

The other BIG thing to watch in the Zohran years will be the growing might of the Nonprofit-Industrial Complex. With the administration’s dual goals of supercharging housing production and boosting overall affordability, an NYC multi developer who has juice w/ the right nonprofits (e.g. Breaking Ground, CPC) could stand to make an absolute killing. The Adams admin was kind to such JVs too, both on co-developer plays and on financing deals (see Related’s “Lufthansa heist” on Signature book) . But we’d expect a Mamdani City Hall to go even harder, and will dive deeper soon.

Quick word on this, more deets will surely drop next week: Carlyle & Z+G Property Group have paid just over $100M ( ≈ $800K/ 🚪 ) to acquire a new build rental in Gowanus, The Promote has learned. The seller of the joint at 130 2nd St. is Joel Wertzberger’s Joyland Group, and Carlyle/Z+G landed debt from Invesco to get the deal done, per sources. As of Oct., the 75-25 building (421a exemption in place) had 70% of its market-rate units leased, per a JLL listing. Z+G (Brooklyn-based player, principals Jay Greenberg, David Cohen) is Carlyle’s frequent partner on larger multi buys, and this is the JV’s biggest deal so far; the partnership also bought a $32M ($627K / 🚪 ) rental in the area in April. (Gowanus is quite the hotbed of activity!)

Carlyle loves NYC multifamily as much as we love Walkers Crisps, and tends to partner up w/ local players to execute/manage. The most prominent e.g. of this is their tie-up w/ Greenbrook on small (≤ 6 units) market-rate buildings that meet the 2A/2B tax designation; that JV just landed a $487M Freddie refi (W&D originated) for its 1K+ unit portfolio of such buildings. The fact that the agency is now down to play in this space is a HUGE deal that we’ll get into in more detail soon.

Happy New Year! This one will be phenomenal, in so many ways. Bless up