Harlem 4-Unit Building Heads to Auction After 13-Year Foreclosure

A 4-unit walk-up at 203 West 137th Street in Harlem is scheduled for a referee’s foreclosure auction on Oct. 27 at 2:15 p.m. at the New York County Courthouse, on a judgment of about $2.2 million in a case that dates to 2013, according to the referee’s notice of sale published in the New York Law Journal starting Sept. 29 (Index No. 850339/2013).

Why it matters

The plaintiff is The Bank of New York Mellon as trustee for a 2007 Countrywide-era mortgage trust, and the defendant named in the notice is Chester B. Davis Sr., the borrower on the loan. The notice says the judgment of foreclosure and sale was entered June 24, 2021, so the lender has waited more than five years from judgment to a sale date and 13 years from the start of the case. A judgment more than double the original loan is what 13 years of accrued interest and fees look like; it also sets a bar for any bidder, since the judgment is what the lender is owed and not a valuation of the building.

The numbers

Our ACRIS pull shows the debt’s path. A $1,200,000 mortgage was recorded Feb. 20, 2007, a week after a prior $615,000 Delta Funding loan was satisfied, and the lender’s rights were assigned to The Bank of New York Mellon on a document recorded May 16, 2013. The deed to the building was recorded Oct. 1, 1999. PLUTO describes a 3-story, 4-unit residential building from 1910 on a 1,898-square-foot lot, and HPD data shows 24 violations on record, 23 of them open. ACRIS also shows a Landmarks Preservation Commission document recorded April 2022. The notice lists no upset price, and we have no appraisal or sale price to compare it to.

What’s next

Foreclosure auctions in New York are often adjourned, so the Oct. 27 date is not a guarantee; watch the court calendar and ACRIS for a referee’s deed on block 2023, lot 27. For more New York coverage, see the New York market page.