Overleveraged NYC Apartment Buildings Leave Tenants In Tens Of Thousands Of Units Threatened With Consequences Of Foreclosure

In New York City, National Public Radio reports:

• Ever since it was purchased in 2007, tenants of the hulking old apartment building on University Avenue in the Bronx have endured cockroaches, leaking pipes, electricity outages and myriad other deprivations and indignities. But the low point probably came last winter, when the boiler ran out of oil. "For two weeks, we had no heat. This room right here? Icicles coming from the ceiling. That's how cold it was," says Luis Correa, 33, standing in the back bedroom of the apartment where he has lived his entire life.

• The building was long owned by a small landlord who did a good job of maintaining it, Correa and his neighbors say. But one day in 2007, they awoke to find it had been purchased by Ocelot Capital Group, along with 24 other buildings, for the staggering sum of $36 million. Later, when the real estate crash left the owners unable to pay the debt service and keep up the property, the new owners abandoned it.

For more, see Some Tenants Pay The Price For Mortgage Excesses (Anywhere from 70,000 to 100,000 New York City apartment units are in foreclosure or at risk of it right now).

In a related story on an 11,000 unit, 56 building NYC apartment complex in deep financial trouble, see The Wall Street Journal: An Apartment Complex Teeters (High-Profile Tishman/BlackRock Property in New York in Danger of Default). RentSigmaSkimming