Sad news from Maui: According to the Wall Street Journal, Lehman Brothers Holdings has filed court papers to foreclose on Hawaii's Ritz-Carlton Kapalua resort.
The luxury resort has been owned since 2006 by a venture of Gencom Group and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s Whitehall Street Global Real Estate LP. The partnership took out the loan from Lehman in 2007, and then launched a $160 million renovation that included a plan to convert 107 units into condominiums. The Journal says that the venture has been in default on its $255 million mortgage for more than a year.
Perhaps more disturbingly, the article quotes real-estate analysis company Real Capital Analytics' list of "roughly $2.1 billion in troubled mortgages attached to 11 properties in the state that have defaulted since the start of the recession in 2008." Most of these, the report says, are big resorts, such as the Four Seasons Maui, which went delinquent on its $425 million mortgage this year. Several are in the hands of their lenders, including the Fairmont Orchid Hawaii and the Ilikai Hotel in Honolulu.
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