Mordechai Piller pays $5.8M for twice bankrupt industrial in Sunset Park

Mordechai Piller through the entity Lm139 LLC paid $5.8 million to Janet Rush through the entity 139-58th St LLC for the industrial building (F4) at 139 58th Street in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
The deal closed on May 23, 2024 and was recorded on June 7, 2024. The property has 14,698 square feet of built space and 7,741 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 22,438 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $394 and the price per buildable square foot is $258 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 seller bought the property on June 21, 2006, for $2.4 million. The signatory for Janet Rush was Janet Rush. The signatory for Mordechai G. Piller was Mordechai G. Piller. The contract date was January 11, 2024.
Janet Rush filed to place this property into bankruptcy protection with the most recent in June 2023 to forestall a June 22, 2023, foreclosure auction, PincusCo reported at the time.

Bankruptcy LINK

This was the second bankruptcy filing for the plaintiff at this property in two years. Rush placed the property in bankruptcy in 2021 (1-21-42840-jmm) which terminated in June 2022.

In the new filing, the petitioner claims the property is worth $6 million based on a broker’s opinion of value. The building has a senior loan with an original principal from 2017 of $3.35 million.

The total secured debt is $4.9 million owned by Lane Capital Partners through LCP NPL XI, 2019 LLC. The lender is pursuing foreclosure through 514848/2019 Brooklyn.

There are also two other cases pending in state supreme court, a personal injury (524010/2017 Brooklyn) case and a product liability case (0023463/2017E Bronx).

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has records that the buyer Mordechai G. Piller purchased five properties in one transactions for a total of $14.2 million and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Janet Rush had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

Violations and lawsuits

The property was involved in zero lawsuits and one bankruptcy over the past two years. The bankruptcy was filed on June 20, 2023, by Janet Rush citing assets of $6 million. In addition, according to city public data, the property has received two DOB violations, $25,000 in ECB penalties, and $25,000 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 Sunset Park, The bulk, or 30 percent of the 34 million square feet of commercial built space are industrial buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 24 percent of the space. In sales, Sunset Park has 1.5 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $421 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 17th highest in Brooklyn. For development, Sunset Park has had very little major development activity relative to other neighborhoods.It had 75,360 square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 0.22 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of two of the 17 commercial properties representing 14,341 square feet of the 193,438 square feet. The two identified owners are Faratro Lorenzo and Baiguang Xia Aka Mich.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 94 percent of the 193,438 square feet of built space are industrial buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 3 percent of the space.

The buyer

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Mordechai G. Piller owned at least 33 commercial properties with 736 residential units in New York City with 682,894 square feet and a city-determined market value of $81 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $9.7 million in debt, borrowed from JPMorgan Chase and PIMCO. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 67 percent of the 682,894 square feet of built space are walkup properties, with elevator properties next occupying 33 percent of the space. They are all located in Brooklyn.

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