NEW YORK CITY-The first six months of the new year could see “important” real estate sales from Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., Bloomberg reported Thursday. Once the nation’s fourth largest investment bank, the bankrupt Lehman is timing the sales to a rise in property values.

“We have some strategic projects involving some very high-quality assets that we hope to be bringingto an attractive market,” CEO Bryan Marsal told Bloomberg. He declined to identify specific assets that might be up for sale. Among Lehman’s local holdings is the International Toy Center at 200 Fifth Ave., which has been repositioned as a high-profile office property.

The day before its Sept. 15, 2008 bankruptcy filing, Lehman listed real estate assets of $23 billion. The value of those assets plummeted to about $14 billion nine months later, according to Bloomberg.

Marsal secured approval from Lehman’s creditors, which include Goldman Sachs, UBS and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, to hold and manage illiquid assets for up to five years, with the hope of recovering some of their value if prices rose. Earlier this month, Lehman completed a $5.4-billion restructuring of the debt on multifamily owner Archstone, its largest real estate asset.

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