Meruelo Maddux Properties Inc. has topped off its 35-story residential tower located at 717 W. 9th St. in downtown Los Angeles, it has announced. When completed, it will be downtown’s tallest residential building.Despite turbulent credit markets, Meruelo Maddux successfully completed an $84 million construction loan for the 717 West 9th St. project in August 2008. No additional borrowing should be need to finish the project. The financing came from an affiliate of Canyon Capital Realty Advisor L.L.C.The Euro-Asian inspired tower, located at the corner of Flower and Ninth St., near the Staples Center, LA Live, and adjacent to the financial…

Is that canary getting choked up in the coal mine again? Sure Mr. Market tanked yesterday, but wipe those tears away and check the Libor. The three-month Libor is holding at 3.54 percent, says the British Bankers’ Association. And the overnight rate drifted up 9 basis point to 1.21 point, the first upward move in 10 days, reports Bloomberg News.Overnight and early so far, third day is a charm–if you are shorting the world. European stocks are drifting downward: The FTSE is negative about 2.4 percent and the DAX about 4 percent. In Asia, the Nikkei was down 2.5 percent;…

First Industrial Realty Trust, Inc. announced yesterday that Michael Brennan resigned as President & CFO and will no longer serve as a member of the board of directors. The company’s board of directors has formed a committee to conduct a search for the next CFO. Ed Tyler, currently a member of the board of directors, will take on the role of lead director and will act as CFO on a temporary basis. The company, formed in 1994, provides industrial real estate solutions, and buys, sells, develops, redevelops, leases and manages industrial real estate in more than 30 markets in the…

Does it really comfort anyone that Alan Greenspan pronounced himself “shocked,” shocked at the meltdown of the credit markets here and overseas, in testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform this morning? The former Federal Reserve chairman (pictured), famed for favoring low interest rates, told the committee, “[T]his crisis … has turned out to be much broader than anything I could have imagined…. Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself especially, are in a state of shocked disbelief.” So maybe markets aren’t perfectly self-regulating…

This is the kind of day that the Dow Jones Industrial Average had: down a little, up a lot, down a little, down some more, up for a short time, down again, up a lot more, down a little, up a lot and then down a little, till the bell rang. Investors couldn’t make up their minds, and who can blame them? In the end, the DJIA was up 172.04 points, or about 2 percent. The Nasdaq lost a bit: 0.73 percent. The S&P 500 gained a bit: 1.26 percent. GE, which back in the good old days–until September, that…

Judging by news that just emerged about the ambitious Metropolitan Miami mixed-use project, one would not know that there is a banking crisis, a struggling economy and a souring real estate market. Joint venture partners MDM Development Group and MetLife Insurance Co. have just gotten their hands on a $250 million construction loan for the Met 2 Financial Center segment of the $1 billion Downtown Miami endeavor. Bank of America N.A. is among the participating banks in the financing deal, as are Wachovia Bank National Association, HSBC Bank USA N.A., RBC Bank and Bank of Scotland PLC. Conceived as the…

Four months after it first announced it was buying 29 communities from Health Care REIT Inc. for $299 million, Emeritus Corp. has completed the second part of the transaction with the acquisition of the last 10 assisted living communities for approximately $77.2 million. All the communities had been operated by Emeritus under long-term leases. With the second closing, Emeritus now owns 29 assisted living communities for seniors with a total of 2,257 units. This acquisition comprised 693 units in 10 communities for $77.2 million, excluding financing and closing costs. The financing for the second transaction consists of $56.4 million of…

Chicago-based retail REIT General Growth Properties is battling to survive billions of dollars in maturing debt during a period of frozen credit markets by soliciting the sale of up to $2 billion in preferred shares to investors.About $1.2 billion in debt will mature in November with another $1.3 billion following in December, according to the company’s second quarter financial report. All told, GGP’s debt totals about $27 billion. The current GGP effort follows a suspension of dividend payments and the replacement of the company’s CFO at the beginning of October. Following those actions, Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Investor Services and Standard…

Real estate experts expect financial and real estate markets to find the bottom in 2009, and flounder for much of 2010, according to a report issued by the Urban Land Institute. The report, which contains survey results from approximately700 real estate professionals, predicts that commercial real estate faces its worst year since the 1991-1992 industry depression, and projects properties will suffer price losses in the 15-20 percent range from their mid- 2007 peak.  Interviewees said that financial institutions will continue to be pressured into moving bad loans off balance sheets, using auctions to expedite the process. Investors will be discouraged until…