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The Wing, a women-focused co-working company, said it was permanently closing all of its locations, ending a nearly six-year run that saw the startup turn from a buzzy sanctuary to one marred by internal turmoil, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The company said on Tuesday that it was closing its six remaining co-working locations because it couldn’t run a financially sustainable operation after losing members during the pandemic. “With the backdrop of the COVID pandemic and increasing global economic challenges, we have been unable to recover,” the Wing said in an email to members. “As a consequence, we are very sorry to say that all of The Wing locations will be closing permanently,” the company said. “Members will no longer have access with immediate effect.” The Wing, which billed itself as something of a feminist boy’s club when it launched in 2016, offered lavish working spaces where manspreading wasn’t allowed. In its heyday, creative and corporate workers filled wait lists for memberships. The company’s website on Wednesday listed monthly memberships from $95 to $295 a month. The company opened spaces in trendy areas of New York, Chicago, San Francisco and the Los Angeles area, and previously had planned to open six locations in Europe by the end of 2022. Members of the Wing will now be granted access to any co-working space owned by office-space company IWG PLC, which purchased a majority stake in the Wing for an undisclosed amount in February 2021.

Preston Parsons, a former fourth-string quarterback for the Denver Broncos has filed for bankruptcy on an 18,000-square-foot home in Cherry Hills Village, Colo., the Denver Post reported. But the bank he owes $5.4 million to wants the chapter 11 case dismissed. It claims that he only filed for bankruptcy Aug. 16 to stop a foreclosure sale of the mansion Aug. 17. Parsons’ bankruptcy filing claims the house is worth $9.5 million. Redfin and Zillow estimate its value at $8.4 million and $8.1 million, respectively. Parsons filed for bankruptcy on the house through a new LLC, Press on Holdings. He lists only one creditor: InBank, which loaned him $4.3 million in 2019 and hasn’t been repaid. Parsons used the house, which he bought for $5.1 million in 2017, as collateral for the loan. In April, InBank sued Parsons and his wife as a result. It claims they also haven’t paid insurance premiums or property taxes for several years and asked an Arapahoe County judge to permit a sale of the mansion. On June 8, Judge Peter Michaelson did so. A foreclosure sale was scheduled for Aug. 17. Two days before, Parsons created Press on Holdings and moved the mansion’s deed from a trust to the LLC, InBank claims. On Aug. 16, Press on Holdings filed for bankruptcy and the foreclosure sale was canceled.

The number of zombie properties — homes abandoned by their owners while in pre-foreclosure status — is inching higher, with the total likely to increase, even as overall vacancies should drop, NationalMortgageNews.com reported. A total of 7,707 residential properties facing foreclosure are sitting vacant in the third quarter, increasing by 1.8% from 7,569 three months earlier and 2.2% from 7,538 year over year, according to a report from real estate data provider Attom. It is the second consecutive quarterly increase in zombie numbers. The trend runs counter to vacancy rates relative to all U.S. properties, which fell to just under 1.3 million, equaling 1.28%, or one in 78 homes. The total is down from 1.31% during the second quarter and 1.35% a year ago.

The U.S. mortgage industry is seeing its first lenders go out of business after a sudden spike in lending rates, and the wave of failures that’s coming could be the worst since the housing bubble burst about 15 years ago, Bloomberg News reported. There’s no systemic meltdown coming this time around, because there hasn’t been the same level of lending excesses and because many of the biggest banks pulled back from mortgages after the financial crisis. But market watchers nonetheless expect a string of bankruptcies broad enough to trigger a spike in layoffs in an industry that employs hundreds of thousands of workers, and potentially an increase in some lending rates. More of the business is now controlled by independent lenders, and with mortgage volumes plunging this year, many are struggling to stay afloat. “The nonbanks are poorly capitalized,” said Nancy Wallace, chair of the real estate group at Berkeley Haas, the business school at University of California, Berkeley. “When the mortgage market tanks they are in trouble.” In 2004, only about a third of the top 20 lenders for refinancings were independent firms. Last year, two-thirds of the top 20 were non-bank lenders, according to LendingPatterns.com, which analyzes the industry for mortgage lenders. Since 2016, banks have seen their share of the market shrink to about a third from about half, according to news and data provider Inside Mortgage Finance. Many of the so-called shadow lenders will emerge from this slowdown relatively unscathed. But some lenders have already stopped operating or scaled down dramatically, including and Sprout Mortgage and First Guaranty Mortgage Corp. Both specialized in riskier lending that isn’t eligible for government backing.

Federal Reserve officials are predicting a slowdown in the housing market but there have been conflicting signals: Home sales have slowed, while housing prices remain high. But a mere slowdown is unlikely to stop the Fed in its crusade to crush inflation, which has led to an increase in interest rates, putting pressure on mortgage rates. Yesterday, the Fed released the minutes from its most recent policy meeting in late July. Fed officials, according to the minutes, think inflation remains too high, and are committed to raising rates. Fed officials did see trouble coming in housing. They said that housing activity had “weakened notably,” in large part because of higher mortgage rates. Meeting participants “anticipated that this slowdown in housing activity would continue,” the minutes said. Many have predicted that the Fed’s efforts to slow inflation would crash housing prices, after a big run-up during the pandemic. And a housing bust might force the Fed to stop raising rates, perhaps before it was able to tame inflation.

American Dream, the most expensive U.S. shopping center ever built, is behind on its bills, the Wall Street Journal reported. Its owner, Canadian mall operator Triple Five Group, failed to make a quarterly $125,000 payment that was due on Aug. 1 to East Rutherford, N.J., according to the town’s mayor. It is the second time the developer has been late on the payment-in-lieu-of-taxes. The owner of the sprawling shopping center and entertainment complex, located across the Hudson River from Manhattan in East Rutherford, hoped to redefine the mall experience when it opened in 2019 after a cost of $6 billion. It was the first mall in the U.S. to devote more space to entertainment, restaurants and theme-park rides than to traditional retail, part of an ambitious effort to lure younger shoppers away from their screens and to the complex. Its nearly 90-acre site includes a 16-story indoor ski hill, a roller coaster, as well as a water park with a steep slide that rises 14 stories high. Triple Five Group has found it challenging to make the project financially viable. The mall was closed for six months as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, and it continues to struggle even as foot traffic to the complex picks up.

Last week, David Tepper's GT Real Estate Holdings LLC took a major step toward potentially resolving its chapter 11 bankruptcy case and the Carolina Panthers headquarters saga in Rock Hill, N.C., the Charlotte Business Journal reported. The entity proposed a bankruptcy plan that would see contractors, creditors and local governments receive around $100 million. That plan is still subject to approval of the creditors and Delaware bankruptcy court, a process that could take months to sort out. Court documents show that a hearing for the bankruptcy plan approval process has been scheduled for Sept. 19. It is referred to as a "disclosure statement hearing" in the court filing. Andy Houston, a Charlotte bankruptcy attorney for Moon Wright & Houston, said that hearing is an initial step toward getting the full bankruptcy plan confirmed. Upon announcing its bankruptcy plan proposal last week, GT Real Estate said it was aiming for an October confirmation. The proposed plan calls for $60.5 million in cash to repay unsecured creditors, contractors and subcontractors from the Panthers project. It includes another $21.65 million to repay York County for its contributions to the project. The city of Rock Hill would receive $20 million or more from the sale of the 240-acre project site after accounting for senior claims and cleanup costs, GT Real Estate said.