As he struggles with debt problems at properties owned by his firm, the Chetrit Group, across the city, developer Joseph Chetrit has been facing off against a lender on the home front as well.
In early December Popular Bank dragged the Chetrit family’s patriarch into court after he missed six months of payments on a $19 million loan that was secured by his Upper East Side mansion.
Because Chetrit had fallen into default, Popular argued that it could seize his eight-bedroom townhouse on East 76th Street and sell it at an auction in order to recoup the $17 million still owed on the mortgage, plus interest, late charges and lawyer’s fees, according to Popular’s lawsuit.
At the time Chetrit claimed ignorance of the whole situation. Indeed, he said he only realized he was delinquent on his home loan – whose payments are due on the first of the month, a legal filing shows – because a reporter called.
One of his lawyers, Josh Graff, of the firm Sukenik, Segal & Graff, later said his client would wire about $900,000 to Popular to settle his debt. Though it’s not exactly clear how much was eventually sent, Popular on Dec. 31 did file a motion to discontinue the case, suggesting Chetrit had made himself whole, according to documents submitted to Manhattan state Supreme Court.
“Mortgagor has reinstated their loan with Plaintiff,” wrote Lisa Williams, of the firm Robertson, Anschutz, Schneid, Crane & Partners, which represented Popular.
On Feb. 4, Justice Francis Kahn officially dismissed the case.
The 76th Street property, which Chetrit shares with his wife, Nancy, is a 34-foot-wide combination of two separate 6-story townhouses. Chetrit acquired the pair in 2007 from nearby Lenox Hill Hospital for $8.7 million, according to the city register. The combined property’s deed actually bears the name of Meyer Chetrit, Joseph’s brother and business partner, though Meyer was not named in the suit; Joseph was the one who signed for the $19 million mortgage in 2019.
Joseph and Meyer Chetrit also merged other townhouses on the block to give them similarly double-wide proportions. Late financier and major Republican donor David Koch purchased one of the jumbo townhouses, No. 110-112, for $40 million in 2018 in an all-cash deal through a shell company, Hamilton 1776, the register shows.
Koch’s estate sold the property in 2023 for $41 million. Its buyer was a shell company named for a French Alp, Plateau des Saix.
