By Patrick Hedlund
DNAinfo News Editor
MANHATTAN —Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village are reportedly worth about half of what they were purchased for less than five years ago, according to an initial appraisal of the property.
The recent assessment valued the 11,227-apartment complex at just $2.8 billion, or nearly half what developer Tishman Speyer and BlackRock Realty bought it for in 2006, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The appraisal by senior lender CW Capital — which last month took over the complex following protracted litigation with a rival junior investor — shows that Stuyvesant Town is now reportedly worth less than the amount owed on the property's $3 billion mortgage.
Debt on the 54-building complex was originally sold as commercial-mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), the Journal reported. The appraisal means that investors, specifically those who own junior shares of the CMBS, will incur losses due to the devaluation, the paper added. Other shareholders already had their investments completely wiped out.
In January, Tishman Speyer and BlackRock defaulted on a $16 million loan payment and turned the complex over to creditors, marking one of the biggest real estate collapses of the economic downturn.
Some analysts at that time pegged the property's worth at as little as $2 billion.
