Cash-Poor NYT Seeks $225M Deal for Building

Another mortgage-backed securities market gets into trouble

(NEWSER) - Just as the economy starts to recover, a second mortgage disaster may be looming. The commercial real estate sector is tanking, with many properties unable to generate enough cash to make mortgage payments. Lo and behold, those commercial mortgages have been sewn into securities—comparable to the packages of home mortgages that set of the financial crisis last year—in a $700 billion market where delinquency rates are skyrocketing. More»

(NEWSER) - New York Times economics reporter Edmund Andrews was smart enough to avoid a financial disaster like the mortgage crisis. But “I had two utterly compelling reasons for taking the plunge,” he writes: “The money was there and I was in love.” With a new fiancée—and back-breaking alimony payments to his first wife—he bought a $460,000 home, using a “liar’s loan” mortgage, based on a fib about his salary. More»

Slowdown plus tough credit slams office market

(NEWSER) - When the commercial real estate market was hot, the sky seemed to be the limit, and increasingly complicated financing arrangements were common. Now the combination of economic crisis and credit freeze has exposed the market's precarious underpinnings, which resemble the pitfalls that brought the residential real estate sector to its knees. One analyst tells NPR: "I call it the commercial real estate of the subprime loan." More»

Obama considering moratorium, gov't-sponsored refinancing

(NEWSER) - The Obama administration is considering plans to stem the tide of foreclosures ranging from doubling the mortgage interest deduction to a six-month foreclosure moratorium to government-sponsored refinancing, reports the Los Angeles Times. But a strategy is still at least several weeks away and, regardless of what bandages are applied, “many people will lose their houses anyway,” one economist predicts. More»

As newspapers tank, company offloads non-core assets

(NEWSER) - With revenues plummeting and advertisers and readers fleeing, the cash-starved New York Times Co is looking to offload a once-sacrosanct asset—its 17.5% stake in the Boston Red Sox and Fenway Park, the Wall Street Journal reports. Revenues at the Times Co arm that includes the Grey Lady and the Boston Globe fell 22% last month, and the company is scrambling for capital to shore it up. More»