Meyer Chetrit, one of the girthy hermanos controlling the besieged Chetrit CRE empire, is now facing criminal charges on top of his financial challenges. Manhattan DA Bragg hit Meyer & the Chetrit Group w/ an indictment Tuesday for an alleged pattern of harassing rent-regulated tenants in Chelsea. The indictment reveals first-degree harassment charges, which could come w/ prison time. A sample of what else Meyer is dealing w/:

“If you’re GIC… Is there such a thing as too much promote?”
“If you're a real estate GP, your product isn't the deal. Your product is the capital that you raise.”

How much promote is Stockbridge owed if the $10B Brookfield deal for YES! Communities goes through? We chop it up on this all-important Q on the freshly dropped pod, and also on how the deal is emblematic of where Flatt-level institutional CRE is heading. Next, we explore RXR’s ♊ vehicle, and why sometimes (oftentimes, let’s be honest), the alpha is not in the deal, but in how it is structured. Finally, lest you think we’re size queens, we dive into a relatively modest office-resi transaction in Wilmington, Delaware – so many fun takeaways there.

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

Four reasons to consider becoming a Founding Member of The Promote Insider – our premium tier for obsessives who want to go deeper down the CRE 🐰 hole.

On Monday we revealed that 601W Companies (Mark Karasick, Michael Silberberg, Victor Gerstein, Harry Skydell) is buying Durst’s 205 E 42nd for $165M. Here are a couple more 🍗 🍗 on the deal

At his pomp, Moshe Silber controlled a $1B+ CRE portfolio w/ over 10K apartments and had his own Gulfstream G550. But then came the wide-ranging crackdown on mortgage fraud, in which Silber (“if there is no price anywhere it’s good”) was one of the main antagonists, and in March he was hit w/ a 30-month prison sentence. Now, as creditors move to collect their millions from him, Silber is serving up a new tale: He’s broke – no real estate, no income, no assets – even the money for his legal defense, he claims, came from his dad Zalman. Basically, the Rhodium Capital Advisors principal is claiming that over the past 3Y (the period between this filing and one from ‘22), all his money has evaporated ☁

Silber made the filing in NY’s Southern District last month, per TRD. His attorney initially filed it as a Ch. 7 (liquidation), but then said that was a mistake and it was meant to be a Ch. 11 (restructuring). Reps put in charge of one of Silber’s former holdcos, CBRM, claim the bankruptcy is a ploy to stymie their efforts to collect monies owed.

Josh Pack, who as co-CEO of Fortress was among the most important figures in CRE finance, died unexpectedly on Monday. He was 51. “Everyone at Fortress is grieving the loss of one of our most exceptional leaders,” the firm said in a statement on its website. Jack Neumark, currently the NYC-based co-head of asset-based finance, is stepping up into the vacant co-CEO role alongside Drew McKnight, while exec chairman Pete Briger is expected to be deeper in the mix for the time being.

Pack joined Fortress in ‘02 from Wells Fargo to help stand up its nascent credit funds business, and worked his way up the ranks. When Fortress, w/ the backing of Emirati SWF Mubadala, orchestrated a management-led buyout of the firm from SoftBank in ‘24, Pack & McKnight assumed the top jobs. And it was quite the perch - Fortress has long played an outsized role in bankrolling developers (see Macklowe, Harry or Cohen, Charles) across our skylines, and has also become somewhat akin to the Paypal mafia of CRE finance, incubating businesses such as Rithm Capital, acquiring key nodes such as CWCapital and farming alum to weighty positions all across the industry.

After the recent regional-bank crisis, Fortress became one of the most vocal & active private-credit players trying to fill the void; Pack had described the banking dislocation as a “trillion-dollar opportunity,” saying that regulators would eventually “have to utilize private capital to clean up the mess and recapitalize the system.” Fortress even bit off a quarter of struggling regional bank First Foundation, a lender heavily exposed to CA multifamily, and Pack was among the principal architects of the new Texas Stock Exchange. Earlier this year, he relocated to London from Dallas to grow the firm’s European arm. Rest well, Josh.

GCT: For those observing. We’ll see you here Friday 🙏