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David’s Bridal LLC has received a tentative going-concern bid that would keep more than 190 stores open, spurring optimism that the wedding dress retailer might be able to survive bankruptcy, Bloomberg News reported. The deal would also keep more than 7,000 jobs by staving off mass store closures, lawyers for the company said in a bankruptcy court hearing Tuesday. The bid deadline has been extended to July 3 and a new sale hearing is scheduled for July 14. “We think the opportunity to save 7,000 jobs and over 190 stores is fantastic for the vendors and the landlords,” Brad Sandler, an attorney representing the company’s official creditor committee, said during the hearing. Price and precise terms of the offer were not disclosed. David’s entered bankruptcy with nearly 300 stores.

Peer Street, a real-estate debt provider aiming to make financing more accessible for wealthy investors and institutions, has filed for bankruptcy due to reduced mortgage demand and scarcer venture-capital funding, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The El Segundo, Calif.-based online platform, which counts venture-capital firms including Andreessen Horowitz and World Innovation Lab as backers, plans to sell itself as part of a chapter 11 filed on Monday. The company entered bankruptcy with both assets and liabilities of up to $100 million. It plans to keep operating while looking for buyers for its loans and other holdings, according to the filing. Rising interest rates have caused demand for mortgages to drop significantly, reducing Peer Street’s revenue, Chief Restructuring Officer David Dunn said in a sworn declaration filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del. Peer Street was founded in 2013 with an aim of giving individual investors access to an asset class that typically has been difficult to tap into, while also providing capital to real-estate lenders and their borrowers. The company gets its loans from private lenders and brokers, and also originates, sells and services loans. Peer Street has originated $5.4 million in mortgages so far this year until its bankruptcy filing, down from $385 million last year and $696 million the year before.

Eviction moratoriums were put in place across the U.S. at the start of the pandemic in 2020 to prevent displacement and curb the spread of the coronavirus. Most expired long ago, but not in Oakland or neighboring San Francisco and Berkeley, all places where rents and rates of homelessness are high, the Associated Press reported. While it's more common to see tenants converging on city halls in California to demand greater protections, in Oakland and surrounding Alameda County small-property landlords staged protests earlier this year demanding an end to the moratoriums. Many of the landlords were Black, like Haile, or Asian American, and they said the eviction bans had saddled them with debt and foreclosure worries while their tenants, who have jobs, live rent-free. They scolded elected leaders for allowing tenants to self-certify that their inability to pay was tied to the pandemic. Alameda County let its moratorium expire at the end of April. In Oakland it ends July 15. Tenants must start paying rent in August in most cases, but cannot be evicted for back rent if their financial hardship was caused by the pandemic. Moratorium backers called the bans a lifesaver that kept countless families housed and off the streets. They said low-income residents are still struggling from the pandemic and need protections from ruthless landlords.

A Florida state agency is selling municipal bonds to backstop the state’s homeowner’s insurance industry after a surge of claims and litigation drove some insurers to shutter, Bloomberg News reported. The Florida Insurance Guaranty Association, which handles the claims of insolvent insurers, plans to borrow $600 million of bonds, according to preliminary offering documents. It is the first time in three decades the agency has tapped the municipal bond market to help support insurance claims. The borrowing provides the agency with needed liquidity. “Our funding sources are somewhat limited,” said Corey Neal, FIGA’s executive director. Historically, the agency has used investment income and the assets of liquidated companies to cover payouts. The last time FIGA sold a muni bond for such purposes was in 1993 after Hurricane Andrew devastated South Florida, causing an estimated $27 billion in damages.

Buy Buy Baby, the baby goods retailer owned by Bed Bath & Beyond, has been attracting interest ahead of its bankruptcy-run auction. But suitors are cooling on keeping its stores open, CNBC.com reported. Last week, Bed Bath & Beyond said in court papers there would be a bankruptcy-run auction Wednesday for Buy Buy Baby’s assets. Bed Bath had its own auction this week, with Overstock.com agreeing to buy for the brand’s intellectual property and digital assets. Divvying up the company’s banners into two auctions came as interested buyers continue to weigh offers for Buy Buy Baby, some that included keeping stores open, according to people familiar with the matter, who were not authorized to speak publicly due to the private nature of the negotiations. But as the auction nears, interest in keeping Buy Buy Baby’s stores open has waned. In particular, the expenses behind running the stores – leases, overhead costs, salaries – make it difficult to reach profitability if Buy Buy Baby’s stores were acquired along with its intellectual property, one of the people said. “There’s not a profitable model where you only have 10 stores or 40 stores,” the person said. Buy Buy Baby had approximately 120 stores, according to court papers.

Distress is spreading in the U.S. commercial real estate industry, with the amount of troubled assets climbing to nearly $64 billion in the first quarter of this year, Bloomberg News reported. The amount of distressed assets rose 10% in the first three months of the year, according to a new report from MSCI Real Assets. Risks loom on the horizon too, with nearly $155 billion of commercial property assets that are potentially troubled, according to the report. Higher borrowing costs have pummeled the commercial real estate industry, driving prices lower and causing some owners to choose to default. Much of the potential distress is tied to buildings that need refinancing at a time when lenders are tightening credit following the collapse of several regional banks. “Should this potential distress be upgraded to full-blown trouble, an increase in distressed asset sales and declining prices would be inevitable,” MSCI Real Assets researchers including Jim Costello and Alexis Maltin wrote in the report. Retail properties including malls were the most troubled type of real estate, with nearly $23 billion of distressed assets tied to the sector. About $18 billion of office buildings were considered distressed at the end of March, according to the report.

Rising rental costs nationwide pushed up eviction filings far above pre-pandemic levels in parts of the country after COVID-19 protections ended, according to recent data, The Hill reported. Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, which tracks evictions in 34 cities and 10 states nationwide, found that in some cities, eviction filings are up by 50 percent or more from pre-pandemic figures. Landlords nationwide file around 3.6 million eviction cases annually. Eviction filings soared in Minneapolis/St. Paul in May, with filings reaching more than 56 percent above the average recorded before the pandemic. In March, filings were up by 106 percent from the average. And in Houston, filings in May were 50 percent greater than their pre-pandemic levels.

As part of its bankruptcy proceedings, the Diocese of Norwich (Conn.) has sold 113.19 acres of property to the Mohegan Tribe, the Norwich Bulletin reported. The property includes the St. Bernard School and was approved by Judge James J. Tancredi of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Hartford. In addition to the $6,550,000 sale price, the bid terms include an initial 20-year lease of the property to St. Bernard School, which under the terms of the bid will remain open. The Court granted a waiver of the 14-day stay period under U.S. Bankruptcy Rules and the sale closed on June 21 following entry of the Sale Order.