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Embattled property developer China Evergrande Group said Wednesday that within six months, it aims to release a global restructuring plan that would respect offshore creditors’ legal rights, after a group of its bondholders threatened last week to sue the company for failing to engage with them, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. During a call with offshore creditors, Evergrande promised to follow the rule of law and respect bondholders’ rights, which in some cases include claims on the company’s secured offshore assets, according to people familiar with the matter. Evergrande also said on the call that its founder and Chairman Xu Jiayin might provide additional financial support to the company as it navigates a prolonged restructuring. The company didn’t discuss any details of its restructuring plan, such as potential bondholder recoveries or asset-sale plans, according to the call participants. Evergrande, once China’s largest property developer, defaulted on its debt in December and is struggling to address more than $300 billion in liabilities, including nearly $20 billion in international bonds. Yesterday’s call came a week after a group of Evergrande’s foreign creditors threatened a legal enforcement plan that could potentially include liquidation of the company’s assets. The group said it was fully within its rights to do so after a continued lack of engagement from Evergrande’s side since the company defaulted. On Monday, Evergrande issued a statement asking the creditors for more time.

A 134-acre piece of property near Denver International Airport, which was poised for development before the owner filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last year, has sold for $18.1 million at a bankruptcy auction, the Denver Business Journal reported. Hilltop at DIA LLC filed for bankruptcy protection in June 2021 due to pandemic-caused delays in finalizing entitlements. Hilltop at DIA LLC is owned and managed by Michael Graham, managing partner for the real estate investment firm Sebastian Partners LLC. Graham had proposed a $400 million mixed-use project near DIA for a master-planned community called Avelon that would include hotels, apartments, roughly 1,100 single-family lots and 40 acres of commercial space. Graham exclusively told the Denver Business Journal in 2019 that the project would be anchored by an amphitheater with a retractable roof, which would allow for year-round events. But by October 2021, Hilco Real Estate LLC, an Illinois-based firm that specializes in real estate strategy for clients, had put out a request for proposals on behalf of Hilltop at DIA for the land at 22050 E. 64th Ave., located at the corner of East 64th Avenue and Picadilly Road near E-470. The property sold to SAV Land Holdings West LLC on Dec. 29, according to Adams County property records. That entity is associated with Minneapolis-based real estate firm Sherman Associates Inc. An order approving the sale, filed in mid-December with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Colorado, confirms Sherman Ventures Management LLC as the successful bidder.

Investors set a record for U.S. commercial-property sales last year, betting that the pandemic is reordering how Americans live, work and play, the Wall Street Journal reported. Real-estate buyers loaded up on warehouses, which serve as fulfillment centers for the e-commerce boom. They bought apartment buildings to capitalize on record high rents. They paid up for resorts and vacation-oriented hotels that benefited from the resurgence in travel to leisure destinations. Overall, commercial-property sales totaled a record $809 billion in 2021, according to data firm Real Capital Analytics. That was nearly double 2020’s total, and it exceeded the previous record of about $600 billion in 2019. The surge in activity reflects investors’ views that work and lifestyle changes brought on by COVID-19 aren’t fleeting. They are wagering hundreds of billions of dollars on that belief. Real-estate investors say they don’t see 2022 sales slowing down much, if at all, from last year’s record pace. Demand for fulfillment centers, other logistics properties and apartment buildings remains strong. That is in part because of supply-chain shortages that are limiting development of such properties, keeping prices of existing inventory high.

New York City hotels are still suffering from the effects of the pandemic, but that hasn’t slowed the flow of new properties expected to open this year and in the years to come, the Wall Street Journal reported. Forty-eight hotels are scheduled to add an estimated 6,500 rooms to the New York City market in 2022, according to fourth-quarter figures released Jan. 23 from research firm Lodging Econometrics. That puts the city on track for the nation’s second-highest growth rate, just behind Austin, Texas, for hotel rooms added among the 50 biggest markets. Hotel operators and developers were drawn to the city’s strong economy and growing tourism sector in the years before COVID-19. In the decade leading up to the pandemic, New York City added more than 41,000 hotel rooms, increasing the city’s room count by 47%. Business travel and tourism cratered during the pandemic and many hotels are struggling to sell rooms. But even lackluster demand hasn’t derailed hotel construction. There were 121 hotels in the New York pipeline as of the fourth quarter, which would add more than 19,000 rooms in the coming years, Lodging Econometrics said.

Seven related companies based in Miami filed chapter 11 reorganization to halt a foreclosure lawsuit against their retail properties in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami, the South Florida Business Journal reported. Real estate investor Mallory Kauderer is the managing member of the seven companies that filed chapter 11 on Jan. 18 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Miami: 6200 NE 2nd Avenue LLC; 5911 NE 2nd Avenue LLC; 5901 NE 2nd Avenue LLC; 5900 NE 2nd Avenue LLC; 5700 NE 2nd Avenue LLC; 175 NE 55th Street LLC and 5524 NE 2nd Avenue LLC. The cases are being jointly managed. The debtors have yet to file a full accounting of their assets and debts. Miami-based attorney Steven Beiley, who represents the debtors, said they filed chapter 11 because they wanted to reorganize their debt after a single creditor won a foreclosure judgment and the auction date was coming up. In October, Chemtov Mortgage Group Corp. won a $7.5 million foreclosure judgment, based on $6 million in principal plus interest and fees, against the seven LLCs, Kauderer individually and Little Haiti Development Partners as guarantor. The foreclosure auction regarding 17 parcels was slated for Jan. 19. The filing of the chapter 11 automatically put the foreclosure on hold.

The bankruptcy auction for one of the largest mansions in the United States was pushed back three weeks to allow more time to attract potential purchasers of the home, which has a $295 million asking price, Bloomberg News reported. Bankruptcy Judge Deborah J. Saltzman granted an extension of the auction for the Los Angeles home known as “The One” last week after a number of would-be buyers needed more time to visit the property, according to court papers filed Friday and attorney David Golubchik of Neale, Bender, Yoo & Golubchik, who is representing the property’s developer. The online bankruptcy auction is now scheduled for Feb. 28 to March 3, and the transaction’s closing, which is subject to court approval, is set for March 21. The no-reserve auction of “The One” was originally slated to occur the second week of February with a final closing date of Feb. 28. Creditors Yogi Securities Holdings and Inferno Investment Inc. filed objections to the plans earlier this month.

Restructuring officers of bankrupt New York property developer All Year Holdings Ltd. proposed a settlement Friday to address a dispute with a major investor by selling eight properties from the company’s Brooklyn real-estate portfolio, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The proposed settlement filed with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan would resolve claims by investor Gary Katz and his Downtown Capital Partners that All Year owed him as much as $100 million on preferred equity instruments he holds. All Year has said it owes Mr. Katz about $57 million. As repayment, the company has offered to transfer managerial control of a corporate affiliate, All Year Equity Partners, to Mr. Katz, who could then sell its eight apartment buildings within five years. Mr. Katz would get the bulk of the proceeds. All Year could receive about $5 million down the line, according to court papers. Judge Martin Glenn of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York is expected to hold a hearing on the settlement proposal in late January. All Year, owned by developer Yoel Goldman, filed for chapter 11 last month to protect itself from potential litigation in the U.S. and Israel while continuing negotiations with creditors owed nearly $1.6 billion in debt, made up of about $800 million in bonds issued on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange and $760 million in mortgage loans.

Austin Mayor Steve Adler wants the Texas city to borrow as much as half-a-billion dollars to help create more affordable housing as soaring real-estate prices threaten to push out the middle class, Bloomberg News reported. That’s our existential challenge right now,” Adler said in an interview outside his downtown condo Monday. “Austin is building more homes per capita than any other city in the country, and it’s still not enough.” Adler, in his eighth and final year as mayor, plans to push for a bond sale of $300 million to $500 million to provide relief from median home prices that jumped almost 20% over the past year to $568,000. He doesn’t want to curb the city’s rapid growth — it posted the fastest population increase among large U.S. cities during the decade through 2020 — but says cheaper housing is needed for the creative types who inspired the unofficial motto of “Keep Austin Weird.” The mayor’s goal is to seek voter approval for the bond during the November election, though he cautioned that it’s “very early” in the planning stage. He said there hasn’t been any review of what the city’s bonding capacity may be without additional taxes.

A Cincinnati government entity outbid more than a dozen investment firms to buy 194 homes in and around the city, a move meant to keep tenants in their homes and private investors out of their neighborhoods, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority agreed last month to pay $14.5 million for the properties scattered throughout Hamilton County, which includes Cincinnati. While continuing to operate them as rentals, the agency said it intends to upgrade and eventually sell the homes to their primarily low-to-middle-income tenants. “We plan to sell them at as low a price as we can,” said Laura Brunner, the Port Authority’s chief executive officer. The program is the most aggressive response yet by local officials looking to keep homes out of the hands of professional investors. Publicly traded companies, private-equity firms and thousands of smaller investors have been buying up single-family homes and renting them out, usually to people who can’t afford the steep down payments. Investors now account for about 18% of all U.S. home sales, up from about 8% in 2009, according to real-estate company Redfin Corp. Big firms supply much-needed rental housing and in some cases manage properties better and more cheaply than small owners. But critics say they also help push up property prices and limit the number of homes for sale, making it harder for people to become homeowners and worsening wealth inequality.