Other People’s Money: Inside the Housing Crisis and the Demise of the Greatest Real Estate Deal Ever Made

In recounting the collapse of “the biggest real estate deal in history,” New York Times reporter Bagli provides an intriguing display of boom psychology perpetuating itself. His absorbing account of the transformation of Manhattan’s mammoth Stuyvestant Town–Peter Cooper Village apartment complex from a haven for moderate-income families to a developer’s dream captures the spirit of the frenzied real-estate market of the first few years of the 21st century. Bagli expands the controversial clash between developers seeking to deregulate rents and tenants concerned with marginalization of the middle class into a larger metaphor for wealth contending with basic needs. His focus, though market-based, is not exclusively economic; he also reviews, in the history of this apartment complex, the change of consciousness relating to civil rights and provides glimpses of a time when corporate paternalism seemed welcome and tenants reflexively accepted regimented conditions and rules. Current New Yorkers may derive wry amusement from the anger of tenants in 1952, when the complex owner sought to raise the monthly rent on four-room apartments to an astonishing $100. The reader interested in New York real estate history, its moneyed elites, or even the self-contradictory aspects of social investment should find ample material for reflection and enjoyment in Bagli’s account. Agent: David Vigliano, Vigliano Associates. (Apr.)