After bowing out of BXP’s upcoming spec office tower at 343 Madison, Norges 🇳🇴 🛢 has found its latest Manhattan target: The firm is buying 1177 Ave of the Americas for $571M ($571 / 🦶) , a ways below the $1B+ sellers Silverstein Properties & CalSTRs (the Cali pension funds just cannot catch a break in office) paid in ‘07.

“Grant Cardone owns 92 % of this thing till the end of this sentence, basically.”

Tithing is the greatest perpetual capital machine there is, and no one has put it to better use in CRE than the Mormons - Not only is the LDS church among the biggest landowners in America, it’s built a serious portfolio of prime assets in A+ locations and crucially, runs them in a serious manner. This week on the pod, we get into the church’s playbook. We then dive into how Grant Cardone structured the rescue of a bankrupt Boca deal, and added $100M worth of Bitcoin into the mix for good measure. So that’s the sacred and the profane, but we also have something for the suits – institutional LPs are rather unhappy about REPE’s pursuit of retail money, fearing for their loss of clout and sweeter terms. Should LPs be concerned? “The answer is YES,” says co-host Krasne.

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See also: Divine Dry Powder

Norges, which manages the considerable oil & gas wealth of Norway, is paying $543M for its 95% stake, while Beacon Capital will hold a 5% stake and asset-manage. The JV did the Eastdil-brokered deal all-cash, and intends to continue operating the 1M sf tower as office – tenants include law firm HSF Kramer (s/o to OG reader Jay Neveloff 🦳 ). This is far from a single-malt building ™ 🥃 , w/ asking rents only hovering in the $80s/ 🦶range as of March. But this kind of property – healthy occupancy, no insane capex required – has seen a pricing revival of sorts in recent months - $571M is FAR better than what it would’ve got in early ‘24, for e.g. And it’s the kind of boring bet that pensions like.

In April, The Promote wrote about how the lads at Newbond (Neil Luthra & Vann Avedisian, alums of the Khimji Brothers’ Highgate) were making their most audacious play yet, snapping up 2 distressed hotels (Parc 55, Hilton Union Sq) in SF that would give them control of nearly 3K 🗝 (8-9% of the city’s total hotel stock). We found the quest so intriguing, we even podded on it.

When REA revealed Newbond as the buyer, its capital partners were unclear. Now, new filings from a court-appointed receiver spotted by SF Chronicle reveal them: Steve Witkoff’s eponymous firm & Conversant Capital, the investment firm founded by Mike Simanovsky (who breaks down his playbook here). Witkoff, now run day-to-day by Steve’s son Alex, dabbles frequently in hospitality, w/ projects such as One High Line, the Public Hotel w/ Schrager (later distressed). The new filings don’t disclose what the JV is paying for the hotels, but their collective valuation has dropped over $1B since a $1.56B appraisal in ‘16. One fun new nugget 🍗 : Eastdil, which marketed the properties on behalf of bondholders, will get $1.2M for its labors, while court-appointed receiver Michelle Russo will pocket $424K - nice work if you can get it!

Bank OZK, arguably still the prom king of CRE construction lending, has fired its chief lending officer Alan Jessup and reshuffled its org chart. “This realignment is intended to enhance the performance of these units,” OZK said in an Aug. 22 filing (h/t Arkansas BJ), though it didn’t provide any specifics about Jessup’s termination. We’re fuzzy on how much sway Jessup had over the squad that developers most care about, the Real Estate Specialties Group that’s also been the bank’s biggest profit center. One of the key RESG guys who handles the Southeast, Greg Newman, sat down w/ CO right around the time of Jessup’s 86’ing, and talked through deals such as the $475M loan for Related Ross’ South Flagler House. (For more on Related Ross, read this). He also talked through the bank’s recent imposition of a $500M cap on construction loans, admitting that it’s been a non-factor. (“truthfully, haven’t had a single transaction that it’s impacted.”)

Some of Greystone’s headaches w/ Fannie Mae appear to be behind them. The lender was removed from Fannie’s pre-review list in recent weeks, insiders confirmed to The Promote. The way it normally works for established agency lenders in good standing w/ Fannie is: They submit a deal on a prelim basis, get Fannie’s blessing, then do their full UW & DD, then rate lock & close – with no need to go back to Fannie for its final blessing. But for a while now, Greystone was required to resubmit to Fannie before closing, an extra step that slowed down the process – and its rivals not subject to the same restrictions were able to use the situation as a marketing opportunity. Greystone had originated an outsized share of loans held by Fannie that later went delinquent, and there had been concerns at the agency about a pattern of problematic deals.

The lifting of pre-review restrictions comes a few months after Greystone hired Fannie alum Michael Keeney to oversee agency-lending underwriting. Meanwhile, over the summer, Greystone began exploring its capital-raising options, as CMA reported, and also engaged in multiple rounds of layoffs. We checked in on some of the bigger exits

Couple of fun Midtown Equities’ (Joseph Cayre, patriarch of this branch of the famed SY clan) developments worth noting, on opposite ends of the glam spectrum