Library JournalNew York Times journalist Bagli's first book serves as a cautionary tale for the nation's real-estate recovery. As part of the 2006 sale from MetLife to Tishman Speyer Properties/BlackRock Realty of Manhattan's iconic Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village—the apartment houses built in the1940s to shelter returning World War II veterans and their families—MetLife agreed to maintain below-market rents for 25 years, enabling working-class families to live in Manhattan. In great detail, Bagli documents how MetLife's goodwill ended and the company began renovating empty units and renting them at market value, and how the more than $5 billion sale funded almost entirely by "other people's money" collapsed in ruin. After expecting fast profits that never materialized, the buyers ended up defaulting on their loan.
