Olympia & York, the troubled Canadian developer, reached an agreement in principle yesterday calling for bondholders of 55 Water Street to take over ownership of the Manhattan office building.

And now I'm not only using it to tide me over, but I'm also tapping into it to buy out troubled developers.

A GROWING number of residential properties are being offered at below-market prices by lenders who have foreclosed on defaulting homeowners and troubled developers.

The banks with the largest loans to troubled developers are generally more willing to renegotiate terms in order to stay out of the courts, hoping that in the longer run the real estate market will improve.

A monument to these ill-fated romances is Niagara Splash, a water slide park that the city inherited from a financially troubled developer several years ago.

But for now, the financially troubled developers of Xanadu have failed to produce a plan for the park and Mr. Kalafer is suing them.

They can foreclose, carry borrowers under easier terms or offer new loans in hopes that more money will put some troubled developers over the hump.

A more recent skirmish involved Donald J. Trump, another financially troubled developer, who threatened to sue The Post over its articles about him.

The General Development Corporation said today that several groups had expressed an interest in acquiring all or a part of the troubled Miami-based developer.

The plan under discussion is to lend the troubled developer $60 million and temporarily suspend some of his interest payments on about $2 billion in debt.