Lender with $7.9M judgment takes co-op retail from Klein Group in foreclosure

The bondholders for a securitized loan acquired the retail cooperative unit from the Klein Group at 659 Broadway in the West Village, Manhattan, that had a judgment lien of $7.9 million. The property also has the address 77-79 Bleecker Street.

The bondholders for Wells Fargo Commercial Mortgage Trust 2019-C49 won the auction on November 1, 2023 at the Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse in Lower Manhattan with a $4 million bid, a sum that fell far short of the total judgment, leaving a large deficiency.
The trust then on November 13, 2023, assigned the bid to the entity WFCM 2019-C49 659 Broadway LLC.

The retail is at the base of a large co-op building with 243 residential units in Greenwich Village that has 196,920 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has five buildings with frontage of 95 feet and is 200 feet deep with a total lot size of 30,999 square feet. The lot is irregular. The property is in the NoHo Historic District.

The Klein Group acquired the leasehold interest in the co-op unit in January 2017 for $8.75 million then in December 2018 borrowed $5.8 million from Rialto Capital, which packaged the debt into the mortgage-backed security.

According to a stipulation signed in July 2023, “to avoid the time, expense and uncertainty associated with further proceedings on the issue of damages, the parties have agreed to a compromise on the amount of the judgment of foreclosure and sale…in the amount of $7,936,861.82, with interest thereon in the amount of $1,609.50 per diem from May 25, 2023, until the date of entry of this judgment.” Stipulation DOCUMENT
Case LINK

Direct link to the property’s ACRIS page