Maverick eyes Lincoln Square townhouse with pool as next target

Maverick Real Estate Partners has found new prey.

The distressed debt investor bought a $7 million loan on a Lincoln Square townhouse once listed by Ryan Serhant for $20 million. The brownstone at 45 West 70th Street is linked to a company run by Sandra Piedrabuena, the wife of hedge funder Russell Abrams.  

Maverick purchased the loan from Axos Bank. PincusCo first reported the loan sale. 

The home went under contract earlier this year for about $14 million, but a messy lawsuit has delayed the sale from going through. 

Maverick has earned a reputation as the savviest and most aggressive distress lender in New York City. The firm, led by David Aviram and Ted Martell, usually acquires non-performing loans and seeks to charge default interest rates as high as the legal limit of 24 percent, plus fees. The firm has bought loans on properties owned by small-time landlords to industry titans such as Joseph Chetrit or Joe Sitt. 

The company told The Real Deal in 2022 that it only seeks to buy loans on commercial properties, not residential homes. Maverick declined to comment for this story.

But the firm appears to be deviating from that strategy with its acquisition of the loan on the Lincoln Square property. Piedrabuena had converted the multi-unit property into a single family residence around 2014, according to court filings.

Abrams purchased the first unit in the building in 1998 and his wife bought the remaining three units by 2010, according to a lawsuit filed by Abrams. The six-story Brownstone was built in 1891 and features an indoor pool and a gym.

“To me it’s priceless, to have a home like this a half-block from Central Park,” Piedrabuena said in an interview with Mansion Global earlier this year. “You have your own world in your own house with your backyard and your own indoor pool. It’s an oasis—you have everything right here.”

The home is tied to a few lawsuits. At least two of those lawsuits involve Russell Abrams.

Abrams’ biography claimed he worked with Fischer Black researching derivative strategies at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. In the early 2000s, he co-founded the hedge fund Titan Capital with his brother Mark. More recently, he started a taxi company in Argentina.

One lawsuit in particular appears to be holding up the sale of the home. 

Abrams sued his neighbor Mitchell Marks and a company affiliated with Marks, alleging that Marks invested $2 million in Abrams’ company. In exchange for the investment, Abrams alleges he and his wife entered into a $2 million promissory note and mortgage which was secured by the property and supposed to be held in escrow. 

But Abrams alleges Marks never redeemed the investment during the required time period. Marks also wrote off his investment on his taxes, according to Abrams. 

The lawsuit alleges Marks was wrongfully seeking to collect on this note in addition to exorbitant interest, upping the total payoff to over $5 million. The amount would nearly wipe away any profit on the home because of the existing $7 million senior loan. 

But this summer, a New York state judge denied Abrams’ attempt to force the sale of the home to the buyer under contract.  

The judge also ruled that Abrams could not demonstrate that Mitchell’s company failed to properly exercise its redemption. The judge said, however, that neither side proffered the correct payoff amount.

The lawsuit remains pending. 

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