In the city’s largest real estate transaction, an investment group led by Tishman Speyer has agreed to pay $5.4 billion to purchase Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village from Metropolitan Life Insurance Company.

Through CB Richard Ellis, Met Life in July began marketing the two housing complexes that it built on Manhattan’s East Side following World War II to house veterans and their families. Together, the complexes contain 110 buildings, more than 11,200 apartments, and about 25,000 residents spread out over 80 acres between First Avenue and the East River and 14th and 23rd streets.

Met Life has been selling off its real estate assets in an effort to diversify its portfolio. The sale of the buildings would give Met Life a profit of $3 billion after taxes, according to a company statement yesterday.

To put together the bid, Tishman Speyer, which controls Rockefeller Center, partnered with BlackRock Realty and the second-largest public pension fund in America, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, sources familiar with the deal said.

The group submitted the highest bid, beating out some of the city’s biggest developers, including Vornado Realty Trust, the Related Companies, Apollo Real Estate Advisors, and the Stonehenge Group, as well as investment banks, overseas investors, and pension funds that were drawn to the prospect of controlling such a large swath of Manhattan real estate.

The property transfer would net the city more than $250 million in tax revenues, real estate analysts said.

A representative of Met Life called Tishman Speyer with the news at about 6 p.m. Monday, according to a source familiar with the deal. A representative of Tishman Speyer showed up with a check, and an army of lawyers and brokers worked through the night to finalize the deal at about 9:15 a.m. yesterday. The buyer and seller are hoping to close on the deal by the end of the year.

According to a source familiar with the deal, Tishman Speyer was not the highest bidder in the first round, but exceeded the $4.5 billion required to make a bid in the final round.

Tishman Speyer, a prominent New York real estate developer and investor, has focused on commercial real estate, and largely left the residential real estate business behind when it sold an apartment building on West End Avenue in 2002 to Archstone-Smith, a real estate investment trust.

The sale announced yesterday would be the second blockbuster deal between Met Life and Tishman Speyer. Last year, the insurance giant sold the MetLife Building at 200 Park Ave., the 58-story, 2.8 million-square-foot office tower formerly known as the Pan Am Building, for $1.72 billion, the highest recorded price for an office building in America. The buyer was a joint venture of Tishman Speyer, the New York City Employees’ Retirement System, and the New York City Teachers’ Retirement System.

Now, real estate experts say the pressure will be on Tishman Speyer to generate enough revenue from the property to make their investment worthwhile.

According to a source with a company that bid on the property, as many as 10% of the rent-stabilized apartments are inhabited illegally by residents who do not use the apartment as their primary residence. Evicting those tenants and charging higher rents could be a source of new income.

In addition, developers have eyed the prospects of developing more retail around the site, and new buildings could be built on the site using existing development rights.That has some residents worrying about the fate of some of the complex’s open space, including Stuyvesant Oval, a large open space in the center of the area.

Some bidders were concerned about the environmental risks at the site, where power facilities were located at one time. The Related Companies, one of the city’s most active residential developers, lowered its bid based on environmental risks, according a source at the company.

Yesterday’s announcement marks the end of a tenant effort to buy the complexes. More than 70% of the apartments in the housing complex are protected by the state’s rent regulation laws, and rent for roughly half of market rate. The apartments will continue to be protected under new ownership, but the prospect of a sale and the fear of eviction prompted a tenant-backed bid to purchase the complexes and preserve affordability.

Backed by some real estate and financing partners, the tenants had bid just more than $4.5 billion to buy the buildings. Yesterday, the local City Council member, Daniel Garodnick, who helped lead the tenant-backed bid, said he feared the sale would accelerate the transition of what he said is a middle class enclave to a “gated community only available to rich New Yorkers.”

Senator Clinton and the council speaker, Christine Quinn, telephoned Tishman Speyer yesterday, calling on the company to maintain the affordability of the complexes.

The president of Tishman Speyer, Jerry Speyer, said yesterday in a statement: “The thousands of tenants in rent-stabilized apartments are completely protected by the existing system. No one should be concerned about a sudden or dramatic shift in this neighborhood’s make-up, character or charm.”

Mr. Garodnick said the neighborhood’s open space could be sacrificed by the new owners to build new developments. He called on Mayor Bloomberg to help negotiate with Tishman Speyer to preserve a level of affordability.

While a host of local politicians pressured Met Life to accept the tenant bid, Mr. Bloomberg sat largely on the sidelines, not wanting to interfere, he said, in a private transaction.

A member of Community Board 6, which includes Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, Scott Greenspan, said yesterday that the silence of the Bloomberg administration was fatal for the tenant’s bid.

“The mayor turned his back on the middle class, the very people who put him in office, twice,” Mr. Greenspan said. “He has talked and talked and talked about affordable housing, and yet here he sat on his hands and did nothing.”

The tenants were seeking about $480 million in city funds to support their bid. The Bloomberg administration performed an analysis of what it would cost to support them and found that for the cost of preserving some of the Stuyvesant Town units, it could build twice as many new affordable units elsewhere, according to a city official. While the tenants have worried about the prospect of losing their apartments, city officials have noted that the tenants will be protected by existing rent stabilization laws after the deal is closed.

A spokesman for the mayor, Stuart Loeser, said yesterday the mayor’s goal is to build and preserve 165,000 affordable housing units.

“The way to achieve this goal is by targeting resources on opportunities that give us the greatest value for City dollars and help the most New Yorkers,” Mr. Loeser said via e-mail.