Toledano in contract to sell distressed Chelsea building

Raphael Toledano is in contract to sell a six-story Chelsea rental building, the single-most valuable property in his dwindling holdings, sources told The Real Deal.

A local private family office signed a hard contract to buy both the deed and the note on the distressed 39-unit property at 125 West 16th Street for a total of $49 million, according to William Schneider, an attorney who represents the buyer, AAK Acquisitions LLC.

In two separate deals, the buyer is paying $43 million for the note to the lender, Madison Realty Capital, and $6 million to Toledano’s Brookhill Properties and partners, Schneider said. The bulk of the funds will repay the debt; the rest is equity.

Madison has been putting the property through foreclosure proceedings since January.
Toledano bought the building for $41.5 million in 2015.  He said he planned to name it the Devorah, after his wife. Madison provided $34 million in financing, including $29.8 million up-front for the acquisition and a proposed expansion plan that Toledano later abandoned.

Representatives for Brookhill and Madison declined to comment.

Aaron Jungreis

Aaron Jungreis, president of Rosewood Realty Group, is brokering the deal. Jungreis is Toledano’s uncle, and once accused the investor of squeezing him out of a major East Village portfolio purchase. That suit was later settled. Jungreis declined to comment.

Toledano, a controversial 27-year-old landlord, is currently juggling several court cases and in the process of losing several key assets.

He is selling the deeds for a distressed, bankrupt 15-building portfolio — the one tied to the settled Jungreis suit — to lender Madison. He is also in a legal tussle with developer Michael Shah over a distressed walk-up at 97 Second Avenue. At the sane time, he is facing eviction at his $13,000-a-month Upper West Side apartment at a Simon Baron Development-owned building, where he claims to be a rent-stabilized tenant.