Bill Cosby is looking to sell a brownstone locked in a foreclosure battle.
The disgraced actor and comedian has listed his 5,000-square-foot prewar property on East 61st Street on the Upper East Side for about $7 million, according to an ad that appeared Tuesday.
The 4-story, six-bedroom home, which features an eat-in kitchen, a formal dining room with a fireplace and an elevator on a landmarked block near Second Avenue, is at the heart of a lawsuit filed in December over an alleged mortgage default.
Lender CitiMortgage claims Cosby, 87, and his wife, Camille, owe $4.2 million for the balance of a 2010 loan plus interest and fees for the property. But in an answer to the complaint filed in February, Cosby’s lawyer denied the accusations and accused the lender of miscalculating the amount due. The case continues to be litigated in Manhattan state Supreme Court.
Joseph Jacobson, the attorney with Manhattan-based Biolsi Law Group representing Cosby in the foreclosure case, had no comment about why his client decided to sell the East 61st Street home amid the court proceedings.
The house, which the Cosbys purchased in 1980 for an amount not spelled out on the deed, was reportedly the home of their son, Ennis, before he was gunned down in 1997 on the side of the road during a Los Angeles visit.
The Cosbys also face a foreclosure threat at their primary residence, also an Upper East Side townhouse, a Beaux-Arts limestone building on East 71st Street. In December lender First Foundation Bank sued the couple over allegedly defaulting on a $17.5 million loan backed by the 12,000-square-foot site, which the Cosbys purchased in 1987 supposedly for about $6 million.
The Cosbys have denied the bank’s allegations in the case, which also continues to wind its way through the state Supreme Court. In the meantime, the Cosbys, who are longtime owners of a rural estate near Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, do not appear to have put their East 71st Street home on the market.
In 2018 a Pennsylvania court convicted Cosby of sexual assault charges over an incident from 14 years prior and sentenced him to 10 years. But that state’s Supreme Court overturned Cosby’s conviction in 2021, allowing him to leave prison early. Dozens of other women have leveled assault allegations against Cosby, who starred as Dr. Cliff Huxtable in the 1980s TV smash The Cosby Show, though he has categorically denied the charges.
Showings of the East 61st home are by appointment only, according to the ad. Adam Schneider, the Corcoran Group agent who has the listing, declined to comment.
