Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. has said it plans to be patient in selling real estate holdings four years after filing the largest U.S. bankruptcy in history. In Detroit, it’s willing to accept less than 10 cents on the dollar to get out while it can.

Lehman is selling a 251,000-square-foot [[23,000-square- meter) office property in suburban Farmington Hills. In June, the bank offered it at auction for $10 a square foot, which would have recovered less than 10 percent of the $27.5 million mortgage it extended in 2007. It’s also selling 1 Woodward Ave., a tower overlooking the city’s riverfront and border with Canada that’s 44 percent vacant.

Detroit’s metro office market is missing out on Michigan’s revival three years after the government rescued General Motors Co. [[GM) and Chrysler Group LLC amid the worst financial crisis since the 1930s. Borrowers 30 days late or more on Detroit-area office loans packaged into commercial mortgage-backed securities rose to 24 percent from 15 percent in August 2011, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, compared with 9.9 percent nationally.

“This is probably not a market where you’re going to see much growth and for that reason, it might make sense to just move on,” said Shaw Lupton, a senior real estate economist at data provider CoStar Group Inc. [[CSGP)
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...mortgages.html