Soros Has Held the Argonaut Mortgage Since 2023, Records Show

The Argonaut Building on West 57th Street is being marketed after a lender took control of it, and the coverage dates that lender’s involvement to a foreclosure auction around September 1. City property records date it to November 10, 2023. On that day Aareal Capital Corporation assigned the $145,000,000 mortgage to QPTF LLC, recorded care of Soros Fund Management LLC at 250 West 55th Street.

Why it matters

The distinction changes what kind of trade this is. A fund that bought a defaulted note at auction weeks ago is a distressed buyer with a fresh basis. A fund that has held the paper for nearly three years has been underwriting this building through the worst of the Manhattan office repricing and has already decided what it thinks the collateral is worth. Anyone bidding is negotiating against a position taken in 2023, not against a September headline.

The second fact matters more for the bid. What sits at 224 West 57th Street is a leasehold condominium, declared in December 2011, and the 2015 buyers took units in that leasehold rather than the fee. Open Society Institute appears on the fee side of the same 2015 recording batch. A leasehold with a ground lessor of that profile is a different asset from an 11 story building on Billionaires’ Row, and it is the reason a price near $100,000,000 can follow a $213,800,000 purchase.

The numbers

The 2015 deed recorded at $213,800,000 across four condominium unit lots. The debt chain ran from a $12,500,000 Citibank mortgage in 2012 to Deutsche Bank in 2015, to Bank of China later that year, to Aareal in June 2018, which consolidated the balance at $145,000,000 and advanced $14,003,914 of new money. Then it stopped. The 2023 assignment to the Soros entity is the last instrument recorded against these lots.

The building is 98,341 sq ft on 14,200 sq ft of land, 11 floors, built in 1909, zoned C5-3 with a built floor area ratio of 6.93 against a commercial ratio of 15.0. Its total assessed value is $22,337,883.

What’s next

No referee’s deed appears in ACRIS, whose records run through August 31, so any transfer completed in September has not posted yet. Watch that lot for the deed and its stated consideration, which will price the leasehold rather than the marketing. See the New York market.