Rialto slaps RFR with two mortgage foreclosure suits

A lender has slapped RFR’s Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs with two foreclosure lawsuits, adding to the pile of legal troubles for the beleaguered firm.

The joint venture that holds Signature Banks’s non-rent-regulated commercial real estate loans filed to foreclose on more than $22 million in loans it issued for the commercial condos at 122 Greenwich Avenue and 219 East 67th Street.

RFR stopped making payments on the loans and owes a total of more than $27 million in principal plus interest and other fees for the properties, according to two separate lawsuits filed this week in New York State Supreme Court.

A spokesperson for RFR declined to comment.

The RFR principals were sued over another mortgage in June by the joint venture, which was formed when two Blackstone affiliates, Rialto Capital Partners and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board bought a 20 percent stake in SIgnature’s debt as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation retained the rest.

Blackstone became the asset manager and Rialto the loan servicer.

According to one of the suits filed this week, RFR took out a $20 million mortgage from Signature against the West Village property when it purchased the eight retail condo units in 2018 and stopped making the $98,000 monthly payments in April 2023.

At the Upper East Side property, RFR borrowed $2 million against the retail condo in 2022 and stopped making payments less than a year later, the other suit alleges.

Signature Bank failed in March 2023 and its loans entered FDIC receivership thereafter.

A Blackstone spokesperson said: “We continue to engage with borrowers to find the best resolutions possible.”

The lawsuits are the latest in a string of financial and legal troubles for RFR. This year alone, the firm has defaulted on an $80 million mortgage backed by a Gowanus development site, $39 million in promissory notes tied up in the Signature loan sale and a $15 million mortgage collateralized by a Miami Beach retail building.

A $105 million loan tied to 90 Fifth Avenue — an 11-story Union Square office building — landed in special servicing in March after RFR fell behind on property taxes. Also, a former RFR executive in April sued Rosen and Fuchs, alleging they failed to pay him $20 million of a $25 million payment promised when he left the company.

RFR also defaulted on a Dumbo office portfolio it owns with Kushner Companies late last year after it could not find a lender willing to refinance the properties’ jumbo loan.

But the firms somehow secured a four-year extension of the $480 million debt despite a recent reappraisal that cut the building’s valuation to $207 million. The firms injected more equity into the deal but have not disclosed how much.

Amid those struggles, RFR sold 980 Madison Avenue — an art gallery, office and retail building — and the land under it to an entity affiliated with Michael Bloomberg for $560 million.