Jared Kushner’s father met with Qatar’s minister of finance last April, to solicit an investment in the family’s distressed asset at 666 Fifth Avenue, according to a new report from the Intercept.
The Qataris shot him down.
It’s worth noting that the project the Qatari foreign minister refused to finance wasn’t just one more item in the Kushner family’s portfolio; it was Jared’s baby — his misbegotten, sickly, drowning baby.
In 2007, Jared Kushner decided that the real-estate market had nowhere to go but up. And so the 26-year-old mogul decided to plow $500 million of his family’s money — and $1.3 billion in borrowed capital — into purchasing 666 Fifth Avenue for twice the price it had previously sold for. Even if we’d somehow avoided a global financial crisis, this would have been a bad bet: Before the crash, when the building was almost fully occupied, it generated only about two-thirds of the revenue the Kushners needed to keep up with their debt payments.
After the crisis, however, things got really hairy. The Kushners were forced to sell off the building’s retail space to pay their non-mortgage debt on the building — and then to hand over nearly half of the office space to Vornado as part of a refinancing agreement with the real-estate giant.
The office space that the Kushners retained is worth less than its $1.2 billion mortgage — which is due early in 2019. If their company can’t find some new scheme for refinancing and redeveloping the property by then, Kushner will have cost his family a fortune.
nymag.com
The loan arranged by Kushner for the 666 Fifth Avenue purchase has been a continuing concern for the family company. It traces back to Kushner’s decision 11 years ago to buy the nation’s most expensive commercial office building, a deal mired in financial trouble.
The company has said that the property represents only a fraction of its real estate interests, which include 20,000 residential apartments and 13 million square feet of commercial space.
Kushner bought 666 Fifth Avenue shortly after taking over the family company. His father had just gone to prison for federal tax evasion, illegal campaign donations and witness tampering. Kushner reimagined the company, selling many of its New Jersey apartment buildings to buy the 41-story Manhattan office tower.
Kushner called the $1.8 billion purchase a “great acquisition,” but the 2007 real estate crash devalued the building and dried up commercial leasing. After a 2011 refinancing, Kushner and his company devised a redevelopment plan that would double the building’s size, and they began trying to empty the tower, which further hurt revenue.
The push was on to find deep-pocketed investors.
FACT A-1: A few months after the 2016 election, Charles Kushner, father of presidential son-in-law and key advisor Jared Kushner, asked Qatar’s minister of finance to help bail the Kushner family real estate company out of a disastrous $1.8 billion investment in 666 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The minister declined.
FACT A-2: Weeks later, Jared Kushner, acting in his White House capacity as Donald Trump’s point person on Mideast policy, encouraged an economic blockade of Qatar by other Middle East nations that continues, despite the fact that there’s a key U.S., air base in the country. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson (whatever’s happened to him?) had opposed the blockade, but of course he’s not family.
FACT B-1: Kushner, in his White House role, met there with officers of Citigroup and the private equity firm Apollo Global Management.
FACT B-2: Citigroup and Apollo later loaned hundreds of millions of dollars to the Kushner real estate firm to help ease the 666 Fifth Avenue crisis.
FACT A&B-3: Qatar’s sovereign investment fund has been a major investor in Apollo.
ottawaherald.com
What is this guy doing in the administration, again?
The whole thing is just bonkers.
Jared Kushner's real estate firm accused of 'bare-faced greed', filing false paperwork
In all, tenants' rights watchdog Housing Rights Initiative found the Kushner Cos. filed at least 80 false applications in 34 buildings across New York City from 2013 to 2016.
metronews.ca
