One of the biggest real estate deals ever is over. A partnership of Tishman Speyer and Lehman Brothers has finished acquiring real estate investment trust Archstone-Smith in a $22.2 billion deal. It's the biggest public-to-private acquisition ever in the apartment REIT sector.

As The Observer reported in May, the Archstone portfolio included at least 10 apartment buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Those apartments--unlike the stabilized ones in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, which another Tishman Speyer-led partnership purchased--are market-rate.