A $39M Bronx Loan on 290 Apartments Hits Pre-Foreclosure

A $39 million pre-foreclosure has been filed against a seven-building Bronx apartment portfolio, PincusCo reported, naming 160 West Kingsbridge Road and the servicer. The rest of that account sits behind a subscription. The mortgage underneath it does not, and it identifies every building, the unit count and the sponsor.

Why it matters

Bronx multifamily distress has mostly surfaced one building at a time, which makes it easy to read as a landlord problem rather than a market one. This is 290 apartments in a single credit. For a developer or a note buyer, the number that matters is $134,483 of debt per apartment on prewar Kingsbridge Heights product, because that is the level at which a 2021 vintage loan stops working, and it is now a published mark for every similar Bronx portfolio financed in the same window.

The buildings were put up between 1915 and 1927 and run 27 to 57 units each. Bronx stock of that vintage and size is predominantly rent stabilized, which would cap the income side of any workout, though the mortgage record does not establish the registration status of these specific buildings.

The numbers

The collateral is seven lots: 160 West Kingsbridge Road, 3004, 3011 and 3030 Heath Avenue, 2500 Webb Avenue, and 2487 and 2497 Grand Avenue. Together they hold 290 residential units in 271,233 sq ft of building on 64,285 sq ft of land. The largest is 2500 Webb Avenue at 57 units, the smallest 3030 Heath Avenue at 27. Six are zoned R6 and one R4A. Against the loan, that is $143.79 per square foot.

The borrowers are seven single-purpose entities, MGSA I, II, III, IV, VII and VIII LLC together with 2500 Webb LLC, all recorded care of Sharp Management Corp. at 2301 Avenue I in Brooklyn.

The loan’s path is the familiar one. It was written by LMF Commercial LLC in December 2021 and it retired New York Community Bank, whose assignment of leases and rents was terminated the same day. In October 2022 it was assigned through RMF Sub 5 LLC and back to LMF Commercial, then to Wilmington Trust as trustee, which is what securitization looks like in the property records. The special servicer now on it is the one PincusCo named.

What’s next

A pre-foreclosure notice is a statutory step, not a judgment, and these portfolios frequently resolve into a modification rather than a sale. The document to watch is a foreclosure complaint in Bronx County Supreme Court, which would fix an index number and put the servicer’s arrears figure on the public file. For the shape of the wider distress file, see the New York market.