Post-bankruptcy auction set for $19M Aview Equities 28-unit Midtown West building, $36.76M loan default

A court-appointed referee scheduled a foreclosure auction for September 17, 2025, to sell the 28-unit apartment building at 19 West 55th Street, in Midtown West, Manhattan, that secures an allegedly defaulted $36.76 million loan Abraham Leifer’s Aview Equities , through the entity 19 W 55 LLC, borrowed on December 30, 2019. The auction date was disclosed in a notice of sale published August 1, 2025, as part of the foreclosure case lender Merchants Bank of Indiana initiated in March 2023. The owner valued the property at $19 million in a December 2024 bankruptcy filing.

This is the second notice of sale for the property. The first, filed December 13, 2024, set a sale date of January 15, 2025. However, on the same day that the notice of sale was published, a bankruptcy specialist on behalf of Abraham Leifer submitted a chapter 11 bankruptcy petition in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of New York in Brooklyn, which blocked the January foreclosure auction. The petition valued the property at $19 million, but stated it has liabilities of more than $69 million, including senior lender Merchants Bank of Indiana seeking $49.5 million, and an unsecured lender seeking $17.75 million, which is at the address of developer Abraham Leser of the Leser Group.

The judge in that bankruptcy case, Nancy Hershey Lord, dismissed the case on April 6, 2025, and it returned to the state court, which subsequently set the auction date.

State Court Case 850114/2023 LINK

Bankruptcy Case 1-24-45220-nhl LINK

David Goldwasser , of FIA Capital Partners, filed the bankruptcy petition. Goldwasser managed the bankruptcy process for another Aview Equities project, a nearly complete hotel at 291 Livingston Street in Downtown Brooklyn, which sold March 6, 2024, for $34.88 million.

The property

The elevator building with 28 residential units in Midtown West has 34,454 square feet of built space and 5,550 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 40,000 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 50 feet and is 100 feet deep with a total lot size of 5,000 square feet. The lot is irregular. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $8.4 million. The most recent loan totaled $36.8 million and was provided by Merchants Bank of Indiana on December 30, 2019.

Prior sales and revenue

This property was sold for $50 million to Aview Equities on December 28, 2017.

The 34,454-square-foot property generated revenue of $1.4 million or $42 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

Development

Jeffrey Harvey of Arep 19 Fifty-Fifth LLC submitted a new building construction project for a 378-unit, 99,961 square-foot hotel/dormitory/shelter (R-1) building at 19 West 55th Street. The plan was filed on February 1, 2013. It calls for the construction of a 176-foot tall, 17-story building and was filed with the New York City Department of Buildings under job number 121329623. The project is described in the filing as: propose to construct a new hotel building and install a tempporary fence as shown on drawings filed herewith.

Over the past five years, there has been no NYC Department of Buildings new building, demolition, or alteration permit application valued at more than $20,000 filed for this parcel.

Violations and lawsuits

According to city public data, the property has received three DOB violations, $3,125 in ECB penalties, 15 housing violations, and $14,125 in OATH penalties in the last year.

The property was involved in zero lawsuits and one bankruptcy over the past two years. The bankruptcy was filed on December 13, 2024, by None citing assets of $49.4 million.

The neighborhood

In Midtown West, The majority, or 75 percent of the 75.9 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with hotel buildings next occupying 14 percent of the space. In sales, Midtown West has the 3rd highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $2.5 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Midtown West is the 2nd most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 35.9 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 47 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of 23 of the 35 commercial properties representing 1,480,060 square feet of the 1,597,691 square feet. The largest owner is Abraham Heby, followed by Assa Properties and then Aview Equities. There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The owner

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Aview Equities owned at least two commercial properties with 159 residential units in New York City with 34,454 square feet and a city-determined market value of $9.5 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $168.8 million in debt, with top three lenders as Parkview Financial, G4 Capital Partners, and Merchants Bank of Indiana respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 100 percent of the 34,454 square feet of built space are elevator properties, with development properties next occupying 0 percent of the space. They are all located in Manhattan.

The owners according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development includes Abraham Leifer, head officer and Marcos Ortiz, site manager. The business entity is 19 W 55 Llc.

The surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 21 West 55 Street, PincusCo identified 21 commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months. Of those 21 items, 16 were sales above $5 million totaling $1.4 billion. The most recent of the 16 was William R. Berkley Foundation which bought the 24,449-square-foot, one-unit office building (O2) on 9 West 54th Street for $38.2 million from Skyline Developers on June 16, 2025. Of those 21 items, five were loans above $5 million totaling $611.8 million. The most recent of the five was Oko Group in which borrowed $115 million from JPMorgan Chase secured by one condo unit in the 159,952-square-foot, 109-unit mixed-use building (RM) on 730 5th Avenue on July 29, 2025.

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