Judge Blocks Student Housing Firm From Collecting $14 Million

A Texas judge temporarily blocked an embattled student housing operator from using the $14 million in commissions it received from the sale last month of a student housing complex in Arizona.

On Friday, the judge, Karin Crump of Travis County, ordered Patrick Nelson’s firm, Nelson Partners Student Housing, to transfer the $14 million to a registry run by the Texas courts for safekeeping until litigation over who should get to keep the sale proceeds is resolved.

“It appears to me that there has been some highly improper behavior by your client,” Judge Crump told Mr. Nelson’s lawyer, Gregory Noschese. “You need to have a real hard and long conversation with your client. It doesn’t look good.”

The ruling is in response to a motion filed this week by the administrator of a court-approved fund that is supposed to collect and distribute $50 million to more than 100 people who invested in Skyloft, a luxury student housing complex that Nelson Partners had bought and managed in Austin, Texas. The administrator had asked the court to put a temporary hold on the $14 million in commissions paid to Nelson Partners from the Arizona property sale until it could be determined if the money should have been paid into the $50 million restitution fund.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/18/business/nelson-partners-lawsuit.html