The Upper East Side’s Court-Ordered Townhouse Sales

12 minutes read

Courtroom drama is once again spilling into the Upper East Side’s townhouse market.

Earlier this week, an East 73rd Street home at the center of a bitter family dispute traded for roughly $10 million — a discount compared to its 2010 purchase price of $13 million. The sale followed a New York judge’s order compelling bankrupt hedge funder Jason Ader to allow his mother to offload the property after he defaulted on a $13 million loan guaranteed by his late father.

Ader’s ordeal isn’t unique in the neighborhood, where generational wealth, failed money moves and high-stakes assets have collided in court. The disputes come with the territory, considering the sky-high prices of many of these homes and the hefty carrying costs that come with them.

Trophy properties on the Upper East Side have been trading below peak prices in recent years, and once the court is involved, selling at a discount is more likely than not. With serious financial strain and tight timelines attached to these cases, sellers aren’t able to hold out for the right price, often slashing their asks to get the deal across the finish line.

While court-ordered sales are nothing new in the neighborhood, a few have made headlines in recent years.

Infamous landlord Steve Croman turned to the court late last year in an attempt to stop a lender from foreclosing on his home at 12 East 72nd Street after he allegedly defaulted on a $31 million loan. Croman sued Axos Bank in December, arguing that an ongoing legal feud with his father kept him from refinancing the loan.

In March, the estate of Peggy Nestor, the sister-in-law of the late fashion designer Oleg Cassini, sold a townhouse at 15 East 63rd Street, which once housed Cassini’s workshop, for $34.5 million. Peggy and her sister, Cassini’s longtime secret wife, Marianne Nestor, bought the house together in the 1980s, but Marianne granted her sister full ownership in 2018.

The deal for the Gilded Age-style mansion came after Peggy filed for Chapter 11 in 2023 to thwart a pending foreclosure sale. As part of the proceeding, the judge ordered her to obtain new loans on the property or sell it.

What followed was a “tortured” sales process, as one lender described, which, after months of delays, required a court-appointed trustee to oversee the transaction. During the process, the sisters refused to allow the broker in to photograph and stage the home, and U.S. Court Marshals had to remove them from the property.

The home hit the market in 2024 with an asking price of $65 million, though it took two years, multiple price chops and a new listing agent to ultimately find a buyer.

But discounts as big as the one at the Cassini home aren’t always the case. Disgraced actor Bill Cosby sold his townhouse at 18 East 71st Street for $28 million in November, just two months after it hit the market for $29 million — a move which allowed him to avoid foreclosure after he defaulted on a $17.5 million loan.

In case you missed it…

The Real Deal released the second episode in its series documenting the rise and fall of the Alexander Brothers. The episode details the first allegations to surface in lawsuits against former top broker Oren Alexander and his twin, security executive Alon Alexander.

It features interviews with this reporter and others at TRD, including Katherine Kallergis and Ellen Cranley, as well as attorney Arick Fudali, who is representing one of the women who sued the Alexanders, and Marina Sorochinski, an investigative psychologist professor at St. John’s University.

NYC Deal of the Week

The most expensive deal to hit public records this week was for a penthouse at 83 Thompson Street, a boutique building in Soho known as Spring + Thompson. The 5,400-square-foot apartment traded for $19.8 million to a buyer whose identity is shielded by an LLC, Moscone BB.

The duplex condo has seven bedrooms, six bathrooms and a wrap-around terrace with an outdoor kitchen.

The developers, SK Development and Madison Realty Capital, tapped a team with Corcoran Sunshine Development Marketing, including Catherine Juracich and Tom Ventura, to head sales at the building.