Irving Langer, one of the biggest apartment landlords in the city, is under siege from disgruntled partners, lenders and even his credit card company — who have collectively sued for more than $30 million.
Langer and his company, Brooklyn-based E&M Associates, at one point owned more than 4,500 apartments in New York. But in recent years he’s struggled with his properties’ finances and complaints from tenants. And he owns many of his investments through syndications and partnerships that have come under stress.
Now a mountain of lawsuits involving different properties is piling up, further fracturing Langer’s real estate empire.
Langer’s attorney, David Shlansky, said the landlord’s business had been impacted by the 2019 rent law changes and rising interest rates, and then one lawsuit piled on another.
“Each one of these is different, all sort of a little bit of a pile-up that has some common causes in the market being upside down,” he said. “Each one of these depends on its particular facts and circumstances.”
In November, for example, a Manhattan judge awarded one of Langer’s lenders a $2.8 million judgment for a loan that the landlord had personally guaranteed.
Aaron Harrow, an Israel-based lender, provided Langer a $1.5 million loan in 2019 to purchase a group of office properties in Mount Arlington, New Jersey. Harrow said Langer failed to repay the loan when it matured and sued in July 2024 to collect on the money due, which was growing ever larger with a 24 percent default rate.
Langer’s attorneys, however, questioned whether he ever received the loan proceeds or whether they were paid to a business partner, Ariel Fein. (Langer and Fein also owned nursing homes in Arizona, which they had a dispute over.)
“There is good reason to believe that Plaintiff may have advanced money, negligently or improperly, to Langer’s former business partner, Ariel Fein,” Langer’s attorney wrote in court papers.
Harrow’s attorney, though, said Langer is responsible for repaying the loan.
“The note in this case is a promise to pay. Period,” he wrote.
Langer, who personally guaranteed the $1.5 million principal, is appealing the judge’s decision.
Another case centers on a $3.4 million broker’s fee that Langer spent 10 years disputing.
Brokerage Georgia Malone & Company in early 2024 won a judgment against Langer’s E&M for work on a $350 million, 87-building Harlem portfolio Langer bought in 2013. With interest, the judgment totaled $6.7 million.
But by the time Malone came to collect, the broker claims Langer started cashing out the properties “thereby depleting all equity . . . [and] rendering the Judgment Debtors insolvent and unable to satisfy the Judgment,” according to court papers.
Malone said Langer sold at least 59 of the 87 buildings at an $80 million profit, then dispersed money to himself and investors, including industry heavyweights like Baruch Singer and Abraham Fruchthandler. She said he refinanced the remaining ones, taking out all the equity and paying his investors. And finally she alleges he sold buildings to affiliated “fronts” for no consideration.
She said he spent more money on defending the case than the commission he owed.
“Contrary to the Judgment Creditors’ claim that they are insolvent, by paying at least $3,700,000.00 in legal fees defending the Georgia Malone & Company’s $3,400,000.00 claim by raising fraudulent and baseless defenses, the Judgment Creditors’ claim of insolvency rings hollow and is further evidence of the fraud that they continue to perpetrate on the Court,” her attorneys wrote.
Malone sued in March last year asking the court to declare the transfers null and void. But last week Langer won his appeal challenging the original $6.7 million judgment. That case was ordered to go to a new trial.
Mounting debts
Langer got his start in the 1970s investing in New York City, then expanded to Florida and the Hudson Valley. He often bought rent-stabilized buildings and converted them to market rate, which drew criticism from tenant groups and politicians.
His most high-profile investment may have been the $40 million Gulliver’s Gate tourist attraction he invested in with his son in 2016 near Times Square, which eventually went bankrupt.
While the Malone case carries on, Langer’s bills are adding up.
In January, the estate of Lawrence Rothberg (an investor and lender to Langer) sued him and E&M for $5.7 million in loans and investments the estate claims Langer failed to repay.
In November, lender Stillwater Asset Management sued Langer over a $4.8 million personal guarantee he signed on an $18 million loan backing a New Jersey office property that Stillwater took over in September through a foreclosure.
And Langer even has credit card bills piling up.
American Express sued him in October and January, claiming he owes nearly $238,000 on his personal and business Platinum cards.
Some of the disputes illustrate the complex nature of Langer’s partnerships.
In May, Langer was sued for $11.2 million by Eva Silber, whose deceased husband, Harry, provided Langer with a $10 million loan collateralized by membership interest in properties in Sunny Isles, Florida and 63 Tiffany Place in Brooklyn.
Langer had signed a confession of judgment with the loan, but in August he filed a motion to have it thrown out. He claimed that Michelle Fuchs, a woman who had been in a longstanding relationship with Silber’s son, and a business associate named Howard Walfish, tricked him into signing the judgment by using a phony company name using Harry’s initials.
“I now believe that Ms. Fuchs and Mr. Walfish were trying to get me to give up 63 Tiffany Place to their new company with them, posing as Eva Silber’s company,” Langer wrote in court papers.
Read more
Irving Langer’s E & M owes $3.4M broker’s fee for Harlem portfolio
Multifamily giant Irving Langer racing to refi 3K-unit portfolio
