It seems like the end of the road for a Midtown office tower owned by a real estate power trio.
The buildings at 500 and 512 Seventh Avenue, where the lender accused the borrower of intentional self-dealing, will be sent to a foreclosure auction to satisfy a $356 million debt, a New York Supreme Court judge has ordered.
The property was owned by a partnership made up of brothers Joseph and Meyer Chetrit, Joseph Moinian and Edward Minskoff, with The Chetrit Group maintaining its offices in No. 512. The borrower agreed to not oppose the motion for foreclosure, according to court documents.
The judgment of foreclosure is a loss for the investors. It also underscores the apparent troubled waters that the Chetrits are facing, as they face personal judgments and plead poverty in court.
The borrower, officially called 500-512 Seventh Avenue Limited Partnership, acquired the leasehold for the property for $140 million in 1999. It took out $375 million against the buildings in 2018. The lender filed a foreclosure suit in July 2025.
In a sworn deposition taken this spring, Meyer Chetrit acknowledged the issues at the Seventh Avenue property. An attorney asked him how far along the company was in the foreclosure process.
“Far away, about to give the keys,” he said. “About to lose it already.”
Chetrit Group had a 56 percent stake in the building, Meyer said in the deposition, adding that it had never paid the $42,000 rent on its offices there in the “four or five” years it had occupied the space.
According to the lender, which took issue with Chetrit Group’s failure to pay, the development firm racked up more than $1 million in back rent.
“[T]his failure by Borrower is evidence of self-dealing or, at a minimum, severe negligence and mismanagement by Borrower in its capacity as sublessor in connection with the Mortgaged Property when taking into account that Guarantor Chetrit is an insider of Borrower,” an attorney for the lender wrote to the court.
The lender had previously accused the borrower of self-dealing on the property, transferring $1 million in tenant security deposits to outside funds, including $300,000 to those for other Chetrit Group projects or associates. The borrower additionally had not been making monthly payments.
The building at 512 Seventh Avenue is a 45-story tower with 544,300 rentable square feet, while the 500 property is an 18-story building with 676,500 rentable square feet. 228 West 38th Street, also included on the loan, is a five-story commercial building with 10,000 rentable square feet.
Representatives for the Chetrits, Moinian and Minskoff did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
News of the foreclosure comes amidst other revelations about the Chetrit Group’s finances. Although the company still owns much of its New York real estate empire, Meyer and Joseph are facing more than $163 million in personal judgments.
The company has continued doing business, including inking refinancing deals. But in the spring deposition, Meyer told a tale of woe, testifying that the Chetrit Group was “dissolving” from lack of money, employees and attorneys had not been paid, and that he was borrowing money from family and friends in order to get by and pay for personal expenses.
When asked who is supporting him financially, Meyer Chetrit answered, “Nobody.”
“God,” he added.
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Meyer Chetrit’s deposition shows how far family empire has sunk
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