Damon Dash's Tribeca loft sold at auction yesterday.
From NY Post
It’s a hard-knock life for one-time hip hop mogul Damon Dash, whose Tribeca duplex was sold today at a foreclosure sale for $5.5 million.
The auction in state Supreme Court was ordered after Dash was sued nearly two years ago for failing to pay the $78,504 monthly tab on a $7.3 million mortgage on the two Manhattan apartments he owned.
Only one of the homes, at 25 N. Moore, fetched any interest yesterday, with the winning bid going to a California-based mortgage and finance firm called Platinum Capital Partners.
Edward Farrell, a lawyer representing the buyer, plunked down a check for 10 percent of the sale price in court, but refused to answer any questions about his client.
Damon Dash
A second apartment at 79 Laight St. went unsold and was taken over by Eastern Savings Bank, which held the mortgage on both properties.
Dash’s celebrity — he co-founded Roc-A-Fella records and the rocawear clothing line with Jay Z before the two split — failed to boost interest in his former homes.
A second bidder for the N. Moore street home, George Rizk, a managing director at D. E. Shaw and Co., said he was interested in the duplex for himself.
When asked if he knew who the apartment had belonged to, he said, "yeah, but it didn’t matter."
The duplex on N. Moore, in a former cold storage building converted to a condominum called The Atlanta, was where Dash famously devoted the second floor of the duplex to his wardrobe, including a room for his 1,300 sneakers.
Five years ago, Dash estimated he was worth $50 million. But since his split with Jay Z, he’s run into financial trouble — including a $2 million tax debt to the state.
Dash was out of town yesterday and did not return a call for comment, but the director of an art gallery he opened in Tribeca said the former bling king is in a better place these days, more focused on music and art and less on money.
"Where he is now is where he wants to be," said Nyssa Frank, the gallery director. "He’s happier now than he’s ever been because he’s working with people he loves doing what he loves."
While Dash rose to fame and fortune as an astute businessman in the world of music and apparel, his investments in the residential real estate market were ill-timed.
In 2004, he bought the 5,200-square-foot N. Moore apartment for $3.875 million and paid $1.8 million for the smaller Laight Street loft. In 2006, near the peak of the real estate boom, he refinanced both properties for $7.3 million.
But as he was failing to make his monthly mortgage payments, Dash twice tried to sell the N. Moore apartment, first in 2008 — right after the stock market crash and Lehman Bros. debacle — for $7.9 million and again in 2009 for $5.75 million.
He twice tried to sell the 2.888-square-foot Laight Street loft, with his last asking price of $3.65 million in 2008 going unmet.
A broker familiar with the market in that neighborhood said the mortgage on his two units is 30 percent above the current market value.
