Metro Center In Downtown Hartford In Foreclosure

[jcrc]

Metro Center on Church Street sank into foreclosure in September after Northland stopped making mortgage payments in April on the 12-story office tower at 350 Church St., according to court documents and city records.

Is Northland in trouble? I can't imagine this is standard loan renegotiation tactic.

http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=t&ct2=us%2F0_0_s_0_0_t&usg=AFQjCNGhgLhJaiMWDtioIrNi-OXNnDDjJA&cid=1476796656&ei=_P0TS_i0C-GFmQeYv7-eAg&rt=SEARCH&vm=STANDARD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.courant.com%2Fbusiness%2Fhc-northland-foreclosure-1125%2C0%2C3158689.story

[The Voice of Reason]

Is Northland in trouble? I can't imagine this is standard loan renegotiation tactic.

http://news.google.c...2C3158689.story

When I read this in the paper my gut feeling was that Northland is not "in Trouble"

The way I see it, Northland refinanced this building when it was worth 110 million and used the proceeds to buy a bunch of other properties (remember that they bought it for just 10 mill back in 97, so they had a ton of equity in it). They still have a bunch of equity in it, but the loan is much larger than before, and then on top of that Lincoln financial re-signed their lease but on a smaller ammount of space. this brought revenues down, and at some point the building starting bleeding a small ammount of money. Since it is common practice to renegotiate commercial loans, and Larry G is a Lawyer, I am sure this is some kind of tactic. mind you one brought on by some financial stress.

Remember he bought a ton of property from distressed multi family operators back in 2008. at the time these were concidered huge bargains, and they were mostly in Austin.

this made Northland the largest landlord in Austin TX, and right now Austin has the strongest econemy in the nation. so, I am fairly certain as a company overall, they are doing fine. at the worst they are getting by. I may be wrong, because I have no clue what he pays his investors, and I do not know the bond rates he pays, but since his holdings are mostly in "good" markets like CT and Austin, and only a portion of his portfolio is in Florida, he should be able to hold on longer than many of his peers.

We will see however.

This story is certainly not over

[Theophrastus Bombastus]

Down the rat hole.......

Remember when Northland said foreclosure was just some clever strategic refinancing ploy??? Bullsh*t.

http://www.courant.com/business/hc-metro-center-reposessed-20110114,0,5746595.story

Northland Investment Corp.'s Metro Center In Hartford Repossessed By Lender

Also, 2 more downtown stores close up shop.....

http://www.courant.com/business/hc-hartford-tobacco-shop-closing-20110114,0,296768.story

Two Historic Downtown Hartford Stores Closing

[HartfordTycoon]

Down the rat hole.......

Remember when Northland said foreclosure was just some clever strategic refinancing ploy??? Bullsh*t.

http://www.courant.com/business/hc-metro-center-reposessed-20110114,0,5746595.story

Northland Investment Corp.'s Metro Center In Hartford Repossessed By Lender

Also, 2 more downtown stores close up shop.....

http://www.courant.com/business/hc-hartford-tobacco-shop-closing-20110114,0,296768.story

Two Historic Downtown Hartford Stores Closing

Looks like Northland is in deep trouble.

Why is Grunberg raising rents when there is so much vacant retail space already. That makes no sense. I guess they would rather have an empty storefront that pays no rent to long time tenants who would probably stick around if rent was staying steady.

[The Voice of Reason]

The Northland one is interesting.

I think letting the bank have the building shows that Northland had no chance/interest of repaying that 25 million and there was not enough upside to keep it. think of it as a homeowner just walking away when too far under water.

I suspect we will see the same with Goodwin building.

H-21 would be more surprising since its apartments, but ya never know

the Grunburg thing seems like there is a ployafoot

dude doesnt need to raise rent, he just lost the last tenant of the office tower. BOA

and retail bank on the ground floor too (moving to statehouse)

now the parking garage is loosing 2 tenants, leaving the camera store and what else?

I think the rent raise might be some messed up ploy to further vacate the property so he can do something else with the land?? i dunno. it makes no sense at all.

i love that cigar shop!