Elmo Realty signs $19M refi for Crown Heights building threatened by foreclosure

Elmo Realty through the entity 1634 Dean LLC as borrower signed a refi loan with lender Metropolitan Commercial Bank valued at $19 million for the 91-unit homeless shelter building (M1) at 1634 Dean Street in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The refinance came just 17 days after Maverick Real Estate Partners filed a pre-foreclosure action.
The loan closed on April 24, 2025 and was recorded on April 28, 2025. The prior lender was Maverick Real Estate Partners which held debt that had an original loan amount of $14.4 million. The property has 41,500 square feet of built space and 6,056 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 47,477 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The loan price per built square foot is $457 and the price per buildable square foot is $400 per the PincusCo analysis. (The price per square foot analysis is the transaction price divided by square feet as reported in public records and assumes no air rights have been sold.)
The signatory for Elmo Realty was Saba Vahdat . The signatories for Metropolitan Commercial Bank were Jay Shah and Ross Dahmen .

The issued an initial certificate of occupancy for the building on November 19, 2024.

The property

The specialty building in Crown Heights has 41,500 square feet of built space and 6,056 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 47,477 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 91 feet and is 184 feet deep with a total lot size of 19,538 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is R6 which allows for up to 2.43 times floor area ratio (FAR) for residential. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $2.2 million. The most recent loan totaled 0.0 and was provided by Maverick Real Estate Partners on March 28, 2025.

Violations and lawsuits

The property was involved in one lawsuit and zero bankruptcies over the past two years. The suit was a $14.4 million commercial foreclosure concerning a loan filed on April 7, 2025, by Maverick Real Estate Partners against Elmo Realty and Saba Vahdat. In addition, according to city public data, the property has received four DOB violations and $1,400 in OATH penalties in the last year.

Development

There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $1 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Crown Heights, The bulk, or 39 percent of the 46.5 million square feet of commercial built space are walkup buildings, with elevator buildings next occupying 36 percent of the space. In sales, Crown Heights has 2 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $534.5 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 12th highest in Brooklyn. For development, Crown Heights has 1.4 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 11th highest in Brooklyn. It had 1.6 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 4 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owner of the one commercial property that spans that spans 130,200 square feet on the block.The identified owner is City Of New York.
On the tax block, there was one new building construction project filed totaling 3,686 square feet. It is a 3,686 square-foot assembly (A-3) building submitted by Jennifer Thomas with plans filed November 10, 2022 and permitted July 18, 2024.

All properties are specialty.

The borrower

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Elmo Realty owned at least four commercial properties with 11 residential units in New York City with 50,506 square feet and a city-determined market value of $6.9 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $67.9 million in debt, with top three lenders as Metropolitan Commercial Bank, Webster Bank, and PIMCO respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 82 percent of the 50,506 square feet of built space are M1 properties, with walkup properties next occupying 18 percent of the space. The bulk, or 82 percent of the built space, is in Brooklyn, with Manhattan next at 18 percent of the space.

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