Thor loses Soho retail with $49M debts in foreclosure sale

Thor Equities lost two retail condominium units at 115 Mercer Street in Soho through a foreclosure sale on October 26, 2022, according to court records. The units with 6,730 square feet of space combined, had a total of $49 million in debts, according to the court filing. The sale has not yet been recorded in Acris.

The buyer was not identified.

Retail properties have been hit particularly hard in the past several years, as consumer buying habits sent more purchases online, and then Covid disrupted in-person shopping. Even as demand for retail space has returned, rents have not risen back to levels seen in the boom years, when this property was refinanced.

Thor Equities, led by Joe Sitt, bought the two units in November 2013 for $16.4 million, and at the same time obtained a loan from Mesa West for $17 million. Just over one year later, in December 2014, Deutsche Bank provided an additional $20 million to bring the total debt to $37 million. At the time, the tenants were Derek Lam and The Kooples. Derek Lam has since closed that store. That loan was rolled into a CMBS package, COMM 2015-DC1.

In March 2019, management of the loan was turned over to a special servicer, and the servicer reported the borrower had defaulted on loan payments on the property, the Wall Street Journal reported at the time. Rialto on behalf of the bondholders, filed a pre-foreclosure action in October 2019, 850240/2019.

The judge signed the order of foreclosure and sale on September 1, 2021.

The condo building with eight residential units in SoHo has 26,691 square feet of built space 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 zoning is M1-5A which allows for up to 5 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing. The property is in the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District.

Clarification: Thor Equities is led by Joe Sitt. An earlier version of this post did not include the reference.

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