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A businessman from Randolph County and an investment group from Upshur County could be poised to square off Wednesday for the purchase of the shuttered Alderson Broaddus University campus, WVNews.com reported. The investment company, DACK Investments of Buckhannon, first agreed to pay $4.9 for the property, only to see that topped late last week, just before the deadline, with a $5 million offer by Elkins businessman Craig G. Phillips. The 170-campus overlooks the City of Philippi and includes several buildings, plus an artificial turf football stadium. An auction for the property now will be held Wednesday morning at U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Clarksburg. Unless bidding skyrockets far above where it is now, the return for creditors will remain pennies on the dollar as the U.S. Department of Agriculture alone holds a note of over $30 million. The small Baptist university filed for chapter 7 bankruptcy in August, a month after announcing that it planned to stop operating. The filing allowed the university to liquidate its assets. The university estimated it had between $1 million and $10 million in total assets, liabilities of between $10 million and $50 million and owed money to between 100 and 199 creditors.

Retail property owners are shedding the discounts and other concessions they offered struggling tenants during the depths of the pandemic, the latest sign that competition for retail real estate is intensifying, the Wall Street Journal reported. Many landlords slashed rent prices as they struggled to fill empty storefronts during the first year of the pandemic. Some felt compelled to accept a portion of monthly sales instead of a fixed rent amount from tenants whose businesses collapsed because of government-mandated closures and social distancing. These arrangements helped retailers stay afloat, and prevented landlords from losing valued tenants. Now, landlords are having a much easier time filling prime retail space and are far less likely to agree to these concessions, said Ed Coury, senior managing director at retail-brokerage firm RCS Real Estate Advisors. Landlords’ increasing leverage is another sign of retail real estate’s recent strength. Store openings outpaced closures for the second straight year in 2023 after years of net closures, according to research firm Coresight Research. Consumer spending remained resilient last year despite high inflation and recession concerns, and Americans’ views on the economy are improving at the start of 2024. This, coupled with scant new construction of retail real estate, leaves landlords optimistic that retailers will be vying for limited available space for the foreseeable future.

WeWork hasn’t paid certain landlords January rent as part of its negotiation strategy, lawyers representing the creditor committee in bankruptcy said in a court filing on Tuesday, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The co-working company is withholding January rent payments of about $33 million “in an effort to strong-arm negotiations with certain landlords,” while receiving fees from its members that occupy the space, according to the bankruptcy court filing. The lawyers said in the filing that while they understand WeWork’s need to rationalize its lease portfolio as part of financial restructuring, the bankruptcy code clearly states that while in bankruptcy, rent payments for unrejected leases must be paid. In fact, WeWork’s budget recently approved by the court “expressly provided for the payment of January rent,” the lawyers said. The company in November filed for chapter 11 protection with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New Jersey. A WeWork spokesman said that the company’s temporary actions of nonpayment “are intended to expedite conversations to reach resolutions that are in the best interests of our entire ecosystem.” “We remain committed to finding mutually beneficial solutions that are better aligned with today’s market conditions, and that will enable us to successfully move forward in our restructuring process,” the spokesman said. Landlords that weren’t paid January rent include City Office REIT, which owns and operates office properties mostly in Sunbelt cities such as Dallas, Phoenix and Tampa, according to the court filings and the company’s website.

A Hamptons, N.Y., estate that once listed for $150 million before falling into bankruptcy was sold at auction Wednesday for $88.5 million, NBCNewYork.com reported. The four-acre estate in Southampton, New York, known as La Dune, was sold by Concierge Auctions at a starting bid of $66 million. The property was sold in two parts — one house sold for $40.5 million and the other for $38.5 million. The buyer premium brings the total sale to $88.5 million. The property, once the most expensive listing the Hamptons and famed for an appearance in the Woody Allen film "Interiors," had been on and off the market since 2016. It was most recently listed in 2022 at $150 million. Last year, the two properties on the compound were put into chapter 11 bankruptcy after a foreclosure judgement. The previous owner, Louise Blouin, purchased the property in the 1990s for $13.5 million. She spent millions building a second mansion on the property in 2001, adding to the existing mansion, which was built in the 1890s.

Rubio’s Coastal Grill is working with advisory firm Hilco Real Estate to address leases across its portfolio of restaurants, Bloomberg News reported. The company operates more than 150 restaurants, its website shows. Known for its fish tacos, the California-based chain is also getting assistance from advisory firm Carl Marks. The company’s earnings have been impacted in part by higher labor costs, they said. Rubio’s filed for chapter 11 protection in 2020, after ceasing operations in Colorado and Florida. Its pre-bankruptcy lender, Golub Capital, and equity holder Mill Road Capital Management took the keys of the reorganized company through a debt-for-equity swap. Golub provided an $8 million loan and Mill Road Capital provided $6 million of equity as part of the restructuring. The restaurant chain has locations throughout Arizona, California and Nevada, according to its website.

WeWork entered bankruptcy looking to reject or amend leases that were fueling billions of dollars in losses at the flexible-workspace company. But more than two months into chapter 11, WeWork remains saddled with hundreds of leases that are straining its finances, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The company has managed to reduce at least 16% or $3.7 billion of its long-term lease expenses through rejections and amendments, according to interviews with WeWork officials and its financial statements. Bankruptcy law allows companies to throw out unfavorable contracts and leases, and WeWork received court approval to reject dozens of leases since filing for bankruptcy in early November. But the company is looking to stay in many of its locations with better terms, and the threat of lease rejections has motivated landlords to come to the table to negotiate. Many landlords prefer to keep WeWork as a tenant because it would be difficult to find new ones in an office real-estate market with record-high availability rates in many metropolitan areas. But new terms have to be approved by their mortgage lenders because lower rent payments drive down property values securing the loans.

In June, landlord SL Green Realty announced the sale of a 49.9% stake in a Manhattan office tower to a Japanese investor. The sale valued the building around $2 billion, making it one of the largest and most consequential U.S. office deals of the year. News of the deal boosted SL Green’s share price about 20% that day, and it is up more than 20% over the past year. The sale also helped buoy sentiment across the beleaguered New York office market. But the sale came with an important caveat. SL Green and other investment firms agreed to sell the buyer, Mori Trust, more than $500 million worth of the building’s debt at a roughly 6% discount, according to people familiar with the sale. SL Green didn’t disclose these transactions in its earnings report, earnings call or in the press release announcing the deal, the Wall Street Journal reported. That sale and that discount, while a modest amount, were important in getting Mori to agree to invest in the building at a $2 billion valuation, despite the property’s debt load, these people said. Analysts said that the sale is a success for SL Green, one of New York’s largest office owners, even with the discount, because the company got $174 million in cash in a tough market. Firms also have some leeway over what to disclose, analysts said. Yet some also said complex deals like this mean valuations now often come with an asterisk. “You see the headline number that everybody cares about, and then there’s the story behind it,” said John Kim, a real-estate stock analyst at BMO Capital Markets. “And in this case 90% of the people who heard about this deal just focus on the number.”

About two-thirds of home solar installers in California are struggling to generate enough sales to operate their businesses after the state slashed incentives for customers to buy rooftop panels, a trade group said, Bloomberg News reported. The California Solar & Storage Association found that 63% of its roughly 400 members reported significant cash flow issues, Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the group, said Wednesday at the Intersolar North America conference in San Diego. Approximately 25 to 30 solar companies have either left the state or closed their business, Del Chiaro said. “We are worried about the next two months,” she said. “We think a lot more fallout may be coming.” Across the country, residential solar companies have struggled with slumping sales as higher interest rates make rooftop panels more expensive. In California, the biggest U.S. solar market, the problems are more acute after a change in regulations that scaled back the amount of money homeowners earn when they sell excess electricity to the grid. Installers are cutting jobs in the state, and bankruptcies have been mounting. Research firm Ohm Analytics, which tracks the solar marketplace, found sales dropping 67% to 85% for California’s private residential installers since the change went into effect in April.

The troubled commercial real estate market is bracing for a record amount of maturing loans, boosting the prospect of a surge in defaults as property owners are forced to refinance at higher rates, the Wall Street Journal reported. In 2023, $541 billion in debt backed by office buildings, hotels, apartments and other types of commercial real estate came due, the highest amount ever for a single year, according to the data firm Trepp. Commercial-debt maturities are expected to continue rising, with more than $2.2 trillion coming due between now and the end of 2027, Trepp said. Most of these loans have so far been repaid or extended. In 2022 and 2023, many owners were able to exercise one- or two-year extensions built into their original loans. Now, those extensions are burning off. That is compelling many borrowers to confront the higher rate environment — along with higher vacancies and weakening cash flows — which is depressing property values. Some owners and creditors are also grappling with the expirations of deals they made early on during the pandemic to delay payments until the worst of the health crisis passed.