Billionaire developer Michael Fuchs is looking to unload one of his Greenwich Village townhouses, as his firm, RFR Holding, endures a rough patch of defaults, foreclosures and lawsuits.
Fuchs, the lower-profile half of a company whose other principal is Aby Rosen, has listed 144 Waverly Place, a 23-foot-wide, 6,300-square-foot prewar property west of Sixth Avenue. Its asking price is $8.9 million, less than the $9.2 million Fuchs paid in 2019, so Fuchs appears willing to take a loss.
Though the person who signed the deed in 2019 is RFR lawyer Rich Froom, he appears to sometimes handle residential transactions on behalf of company officials. Indeed, Froom’s name is on the deed for the Park Avenue condo purchased last year by RFR executive Alexander Koblischek, who oversees the firm’s investments in Germany.
Plus, the owner of 144 Waverly as per the city register, MF Townhouse LLC, uses Fuchs’ initials, the same initials used for other homes linked to Fuchs, like a two-bedroom condo at 302 W. 12th St. that he purchased in 2018 with ex-wife Alvina Collardeau. Fuchs appears to still own that unit, which he and Collardeau bought from the comedian Seth Meyers and his wife, attorney Alexi Meyers, for $4.4 million.
It doesn’t appear as if Fuchs ever lived at 144 Waverly, a five-floor Greek Revival dwelling divided into four units, including an owner’s duplex, which seems to have functioned as an investment property. The units there have been marketed as rentals through the years, including the duplex, which was listed at around $14,000 a month in 2021, according to StreetEasy.
In fact, Fuchs owns another townhouse at nearby 59 Morton St., a single-family version near Hudson St. that he bought at the same time as the Waverly Place property and from the same seller. It cost $8.3 million, according to the register, and is not currently on the market.
To finance the April 2018 purchase of both Waverly Place and Morton Street, Fuchs borrowed $14 million from M&T Bank, the register shows.
RFR, which has multiple holdings in New York; Stamford, Conn.; and Seattle, and is an owner of the landmark high-rises the Chrysler Building and the Seagram Building, notched a major win this month with the sale of the mixed-use Upper East Side building 980 Madison Ave. for $560 million to a charitable group tied to billionaire and former Mayor Michel Bloomberg. RFR appears to have bought the building in 2004 for $125 million deal, records show.
In 2022 RFR also offloaded the West Village office building 95 Morton St. for $288 million after shelling out $206 million for it in 2017. Also, the firm also stands to rake in a hefty haul for 281 Park Avenue South, the home of the Swedish photography museum Fotografiska, which is now being marketed for the reported amount of $140 million. RFR paid $50 million for the National Register property in 2014, records show.
But on other fronts, RFR, which Germany-born childhood friends Fuchs and Rosen founded in 1991, appears to be struggling in the face of mounting debts.
Fitch this month downgraded its rating on a security linked to a $102 million mortgage at RFR’s 90 Fifth Ave. over missed property tax payments; the loan for the office building had previously been sent to a special servicer.
Likewise, a lender moved this month to foreclose on RFR’s 522 Fifth Ave. over the landlord’s failure to pay off a $224 million loan when it came due in March. The firm also defaulted earlier this year on an $80 million mortgage issued for a multifamily development site on Third Street in Gowanus, Brooklyn.
Ex-partner Jason Brown sued RFR earlier this year over the firm’s allegedly failing to pay the entirety of Brown’s $25 million exit package.
And on a personal level, Fuchs recently emerged bruised from a bitter court battle in England with ex-wife Collardeau over the details of their prenuptial agreement, with a judge ordering Fuchs to pay Collardeau, a former British journalist, $44 million.
A phone message for Sheldon Werdiger, who handles RFR’s marketing, was not returned by press time. And Christopher Riccio, the Douglas Elliman agent marketing the property, did not respond to an email for comment.
C. J. Hughes , 2024-06-13 19:50:16
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