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Detroit Bankruptcy Creditor Trying to Sell Joe Louis Arena Interest to Developer

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A creditor from Detroit's municipal bankruptcy is trying to exit its ownership stake in the redevelopment of the Joe Louis Arena property on the Detroit River by selling to a local developer, Crain’s Detroit reported. New York-based Financial Guaranty Insurance Corp. has been in discussions with an unnamed developer about selling its interest in the redevelopment of the 9-acre property that until 2017 housed the Detroit Red Wings. The terms of a possible deal are not known. As it stands, the developer would then buy the city's ownership interest in the property, which is being demolished, and own it outright. FGIC subsidiary Gotham Motown Recovery LLC requested (and this week received) until June 15, 2021, to submit a development plan for the property, which was abandoned when the Red Wings moved to Little Caesars Arena two years ago. The new agreement calls for demolition and remediation to be complete by June 15, 2020. The demolition is estimated at $13.2 million and has received brownfield financing. Exterior work began last month. Bankruptcy court documents in 2014 said that the property was to be redeveloped with a hotel with at least 300 rooms and standing no more than 30 stories and a mix of office, retail, recreation and residential space.
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Inverness Village Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

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West Tulsa retirement community Inverness Village filed a voluntary petition for chapter 11 protection to reorganize its debts, Tulsa World reported. The bankruptcy filing is part of an agreement for the sale of Inverness Village to Tulsa Hills Community Inc., a subsidiary of Covenant Living Communities and Services. According to court filings, Inverness has $62.3 million in total assets and $174.9 million in total debts. The board of directors wrote that it “fully evaluated all of the strategic alternatives available … and determined that in order to achieve the highest and best value for the sale of the Inverness Facility” that it would file the bankruptcy case. Inverness Village opened in 2003 and accommodates residents’ needs based on their required level of care through its integrated independent living facility, assisted living facility and skilled nursing and memory-care facilities. Asbury Communities Inc., the nonprofit, Maryland-based manager of Inverness Village, is listed as having a $37.6 million claim, the largest unsecured claim listed in the filing. Nineteen other parties, all residents, are named as creditors with unsecured claims.
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BofA Sides with Elderly Borrowers in Ditech Bankruptcy

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Bank of America has emerged as a champion of elderly borrowers in Ditech's second trip through bankruptcy, American Banker reported. The bank is siding with a growing list of groups, including the U.S. Trustee, attorneys general from several states and consumers, who object to Ditech’s plan to sell its reverse mortgage business. BofA, for its part, has warned that the sale could leave thousands of BofA’s elderly borrowers without promised services on their loans. The reverse mortgages are held by people with an average age of 81, and for many of them, the loan is their primary source of income. Some of the loans date from before the financial crisis. The loans are owned by BofA and serviced by Ditech's Reverse Mortgage Solutions Inc., which the company plans to sell to Mortgage Assets Management LLC. The latter company is affiliated with Waterfall Asset Management LLC. New York-based Waterfall focuses on investing in asset-backed securities, loans and private equity. The objection from BofA comes on top of separate complaints and objections from borrowers who oppose the bankruptcy plan; they say that Ditech is trying to sell its business to a new owner free-and-clear of their claims against the company for mishandling their mortgages. The U.S. Trustee has voiced similar concerns.

Editorial: Forcing Landlords into Bankruptcy Will Destroy NYC

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Landlords throughout New York State and especially those in the city claim that our elected legislators (backed by NYC Mayor Bill De Blasio) have set up, with their recently enacted stricter rent regulations, a Pandora’s box of potential conflicts, according to an editorial published by the Jewish Voice. Challenges are already being worked up by teams of lawyers and it’s more than a certainty that litigation opposing these new draconian measures will end up in the courts and most assuredly way up to the Supreme Court for jurisdiction. By their actions the Albany crowd may have doomed rent control altogether. The City Rent Stabilization Association and the Community Housing Improvement Program have both filed cases in the Eastern District claiming that New York’s law violates both the Due Process and Takings clauses of the U.S. Constitution. We have always been on the side of those who own their own businesses, those who have gambled their own dollars to build, purchase and develop safe, secure housing for those who wish to rent and reside in our city. These entrepreneurs fuel the stability and growth of our city, yet our legislators wish to strangle them with rules and regulations that carbon copy those of a dictatorial regime. Just take a gander at the housing as seen in videos of Cuba that are dilapidated, crumbling, dangerous and to put it plainly, ugly. As an example one of their tyrannical laws stipulated that a landlord is forbidden from taking a unit in his own building for his own use. It also limits the size of security deposits, sets new barriers to evicting tenants who are criminals or rent withholding ones and guarantees that high income tenants can’t have their upscale apartments escape the rent-stabilization program.
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Restaurateur’s Real Estate Firm Files for Bankruptcy

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Mondorivoli, the real estate holding company of Durango, Colo., restaurateur Jean-Pierre Bleger, has filed for bankruptcy in U.S. Bankruptcy Court seeking reorganization under chapter 11, the Durango Herald reported. Mondorivoli’s attorney, Kenneth Buechler, said that the bankruptcy will not affect the operation of Bleger’s restaurant, Jean-Pierre Bakery, Café and Wine Bar. Mondorivoli is also seeking financing to pay off all its loans and creditors and consolidate debt with a new creditor, and if the new financing can be obtained, the bankruptcy petition would be dismissed. Another possibility is refinancing the debt with creditors at lower-interest rates. The bankruptcy petition was filed July 18 to stop foreclosures or collection actions while new financing was sought. A meeting with creditors will likely be held within the next 30 days, but a meeting has not yet been set. Five properties, four in Durango and a strip mall in Pagosa Springs, are involved in the chapter 11 filing. Bleger has been plagued with financial woes for years. A previous real estate company, Winble Corp., filed for chapter 11 in 2006. The café and bakery at 601 Main Ave. was purchased for $1.63 million in 2003 and foreclosed in 2009. Bleger established Mondorivoli in April 2010 as the firm handling his real estate ventures.

Wealthy New Yorkers Are Ditching City’s High Taxes for Miami

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Affluent New Yorkers, financially distressed by recent changes to the nation’s tax laws, are bucking the Big Apple’s high costs and heading for an economic paradise: Florida’s Miami-Dade County area, the New York Post reported. The famed resort is luring the disgruntled urbanites with the prospect of a considerable annual tax and cost-of-living savings of between $20,000 to $120,000 for high earners. The federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act signed into law in late 2017 brought with it sweeping changes that limited deductions on state and local taxes — with taxpayers particularly hard hit in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, which are among the states with the highest income and property taxes. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, Florida had the highest number of migrants from other states, with New York contributing the most — 63,722 people during the 12 months ended in July 2018. Miami-Dade is catching particular interest from dissatisfied New Yorkers. A local executive says New York’s tax woes have been as positive for business as Venezuela’s socialist government, credited for thousands of Venezuelans who have fled to Florida. Armando Codina, executive chairman of Codina Partners, developer of Downtown Doral. estimates as many as 1 in 4 of the residential units for sale in his community of 60,000 will be purchased by New Yorkers, expanding the permanent ex-New Yorker population by another 5,000. The reason is not surprising. A study posted by the Unhappy New Yorkers Web site calculates savings of nearly $25,000 on an annual income of $100,000 in Dade County compared with New York City, owing to lower taxes and lower cost of living. And that savings translates to a tidy $235,000 on $1 million.

U.S. Reform Plan for Fannie, Freddie Seen by September

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The Trump administration’s hotly anticipated blueprint for overhauling mortgage guarantors Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may not be published until September as the U.S. Treasury juggles several other pressing issues, the housing regulator told Reuters. Mark Calabria, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees the government-sponsored enterprises, said in an interview it was his “hope” that they would have exited or be ready to exit conservatorship before his term ends in 2024. However, Calabria is not operating toward a hard deadline, he noted. “That’s my time horizon,” he said, referring to the end of his term. “I’m under no expectation to try to get all this done. ... So if in four years, nine months they’re not out of conservatorship, I’m not pushing them out.” Calabria’s comments will temper market expectations for a speedy overhaul of Fannie and Freddie before the 2020 presidential election.

New York, New Jersey Pursue Another Battle in SALT Deduction War

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New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are again suing President Donald Trump’s administration over a provision in the 2017 tax law that limited write-offs for state and local taxes, Bloomberg News reported. The lawsuit filed yesterday asks a court to stop recent Internal Revenue Service regulations that invalidated state workarounds to help residents maximize the amount of state and local taxes, or SALT, they could deduct. The effort is one of several to reverse one of the most politically contentious changes in Trump’s 2017 tax law, and it’s not clear if it will get any more traction. The 2017 Republican tax law limited the amount of SALT deductions to $10,000. Write-offs were previously unlimited. Democrats in Congress and state lawmakers said the change was intended to target Democratic-led states that tend to have higher taxes. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo called it “economic civil war.” This is the second lawsuit northeastern states have filed in an attempt to nullify the SALT cap. The village of Scarsdale and the town of Rye, both wealthy New York City suburbs, also filed a lawsuit against the IRS regulations Wednesday. Last year, the states sued the Trump administration seeking to get the cap itself declared unconstitutional. That case, which many legal experts also say is a long-shot, is still working its way through the courts.

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Landlords Challenge New York’s Rent-Control Law in Federal Court

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Landlord groups yesterday filed a U.S. constitutional challenge to New York’s rent regulations, alleging that state and city governments had, in effect, taken over nearly a million rent-regulated apartments with its new law, the Wall Street Journal reported. The suit seeks to upend New York’s system of rent regulation that dates back to federal price controls during World War II. The new rent law makes it more difficult for apartment owners to increase rents and eliminates rules that allowed them to free up thousands of apartments from rent regulations. Courts have dismissed similar challenges in New York and other states, but building owners say that their prospects in court have improved since then, in part because of the severity of new restrictions on rental properties. The lawsuit doesn’t seek compensation for property owners, but rather asks that the courts find that the law violates constitutional protections and direct the New York legislature “go back to the drawing board and come up with something else,” said Andrew Pincus, attorney for the landlords.

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