The New York Times Charles V. Bagli has an outstanding article on the genesis of the largest residential real estate deal of our time, the sale of Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town by MetLife to Tishman Speyer Properties. The deal was contested for by over 100 bidders and sold for 5.4 billion dollars. When the deposit is 400 million, you know you are talking some serious coin.

On the phone was Darcy A. Stacom, the broker handling the multibillion-dollar sale of two huge, adjacent Manhattan tracts — Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village — for the properties’ owner, Metropolitan Life Insurance. Ms. Stacom asked Mr. Speyer to hustle eight blocks south from his Fifth Avenue conference room to a skyscraper on 45th Street, telling him to bring along representatives of his partner, BlackRock Inc., and his bankers and lawyers. She also cautioned him that they should arrive in groups of two, not en masse, to avoid any unwanted attention — there were eight other potential buyers waiting for the same phone call that Mr. Speyer had just received.

Mr. Speyer’s team and MetLife then wrestled through the night over the terms of a possible sale, with an occasional round of five-card stud during the lulls. A bleary-eyed Mr. Speyer finally signed the documents at about 9:30 the next morning, plunking down a $400 million deposit on what would be the biggest real estate deal of all time: the $5.4 billion purchase of 80 acres of prime Manhattan land that included 110 buildings and 11,232 apartments. NYT

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