Fannie Mae files $74.8M pre-foreclosure at Moinian Group FiDi rental

Fannie Mae alleges a loan with an original principal of $74.8 million provided to Moinian Group and secured by a ground leasehold in the 397-unit rental building at 90 Washington Street in the Financial District, Manhattan, was in default. The lender filed the complaint in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on February 28, 2025.

Fannie Mae alleges three defaults, including for poor maintenance of the property and for liens. It does not allege a payment or loan maturity default.
Case 1:25-cv-01728 LINK

Court filings represent the position of one party and are not necessarily accurate or complete.

This default notice follows years of litigation between Joseph Moinian’s Moinian Group and the Katz family (that includes Edward and his late brother Daniel Katz) which owns the fee. The parties battled in court through cases 161333/2019 and 156220/2021, both filed by Moinian Group seeking to block termination of the ground lease. In both, Katz alleged Moinian Group had not completed required facade repairs in response to a local law 11 violation the city issued in 2011.

Moinian Group purchased the ground lease from Tamir Sapir in 2003 for $35 million, according to an analysis of transfer tax payments in city records.

After the city issued the facade violation in 2011, Moinian began brick replacement, then switched to facade recladding which in the litigation was known as the “panel project,” that uses mesh to prevent bricks from falling.

In 2018, the Katz interests issued a default notice alleging Moinian was not keeping the property in “good and workmanlike manner,” as it related to the facade.

Fannie Mae alleges the facade work remains incomplete 14 years after the violation was issued, and notes the court found on September 5, 2024, that because of that, Moinian was in default of the 99-year ground lease.

On September 6, 2024, Katz issued a 60-day notice to cure to Fannie Mae, or it will terminate the ground lease. Fannie Mae sent a letter to Katz seeking an extension, and on November 5, 2024, Fannie Mae sent a notice to Moinian that the loan was in default and would seek to foreclose on the loan.

Harry Driezen of JDM Washington Street Llc submitted a major alteration application for an $8,000,000 rehab of commercial (COM) building at 90 Washington Street in Financial District, Manhattan. The plan was filed with the New York City Department of Buildings on February 6, 2003 under job number 103367161 and was permitted on April 22, 2003.

The property

The elevator building with 397 residential units in Financial District has 335,114 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 156 feet and is 179 feet deep with a total lot size of 23,902 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is C6-9 which allows for up to 15 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 10 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $81.7 million.

Prior sales and revenue

The 335,114-square-foot property generated revenue of $14.7 million or $44 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

Development

For the tax lot building, it received its initial certificate of occupancy on November 16, 2016.

Violations and lawsuits

According to city public data, the property has received one DOB violation, $48,460 in ECB penalties, 13 housing violations, and $48,860 in OATH penalties in the last year.

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months.

The neighborhood

In Financial District, The majority, or 74 percent of the 79.9 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with elevator buildings next occupying 15 percent of the space. In sales, Financial District has the 5th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $1.7 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Financial District is the 3rd most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 14.1 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 18 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of one of the two commercial properties representing 335,114 square feet of the 447,114 square feet. The identified owner is Moinian Group. There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The owner

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Moinian Group owned at least 15 commercial properties with 1,289 residential units in New York City with 1,971,190 square feet and a city-determined market value of $522.4 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $1.6 billion in debt, with top three lenders as Deutsche Bank, Bank of China, and AIG respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 48 percent of the 1,971,190 square feet of built space are office properties, with elevator properties next occupying 45 percent of the space. The bulk, or 81 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Brooklyn next at 19 percent of the space.

The owners according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development includes Kimberly Cafaro, head officer and John Mehmedovic, officer. The business entity is Jdm Washington Street Llc.

The surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 54 West Street, PincusCo identified eight commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months. One of those eight items was a sale which Ravinder Chopra and Yuvraj Chopra bought the 21,490-square-foot, one-unit dormitory (H8) on 102 Greenwich Street for $15.2 million from King’s College on July 26, 2024. Of those eight items, seven were loans above $5 million totaling $447 million. The most recent of the seven was Grubb Properties in which borrowed $106.7 million from Maxim Capital Group secured by the zero-square-foot, 467-unit rental (D6) on 111 Washington Street on February 13, 2025.

Direct link to the property’s ACRIS page and link to DOB NOW portal.