Lender Takes Back Ohebshalom’s Downtown Brooklyn Building

Richard Ohebshalom’s Downtown Brooklyn rental building went back to the lender in a foreclosure auction.

Chicago-based commercial real estate lender Prime Finance bought the brick-clad 103-unit apartment building at 180 Nassau Street for $1,000. There were no other bidders at the auction — but a few gasps erupted from the gallery as the $51.5 million upset price was announced.

The lender filed a foreclosure suit in 2022, the same year it bought a $52 million note on the property from Investors Bank. Prime claimed that Pink Stone failed to resume debt payments after a forbearance period extended to the developer ended that year. The court appointed a receiver in May 2023.

The debt on the property had ballooned to $58 million by August, when a state Supreme Court judge ordered a foreclosure auction for the property.

Ohebshalom, the son of Empire Management’s Fred Ohebshalom, bought the development site at Nassau and Duffield streets for $11.28 million from Brooklyn developer Isaac Hager in 2012. He wrapped up construction in 2014 on the 10-story rental building, known as Warehouse 180, and Investors issued the $52 million loan that year.

Ohebshalom tried selling the property in 2018, asking north of $60 million according to sources at the time, but no deal was reached. A potential obstacle was the looming phase-out of the building’s 421a property tax abatement, which caused property taxes owed on the building to increase.

In 2023, Ohebshalom lost control of a 7-story Soho building, including an apartment where he lived, after pledging the property as collateral for $4 million in mezzanine loans. A few years earlier, in 2018, Pink Stone found itself embroiled in a family feud when Ohebshalom filed two lawsuits against his father.