Main image: 18 East 71st Street via Google Maps. Bill Cosby (2011) by The World Affairs Council of Philadelphia via Wikimedia Commons
The storm clouds that briefly interrupted New York’s otherwise unseasonably mild New Year’s Eve seemed to have permanently gathered over Bill Cosby’s properties on the Upper East Side, as the disgraced celebrity is reportedly facing his second UES foreclosure in less than a month.
Advertisement
As reported by Crain’s New York Business, First Foundation Bank filed a lawsuit in Manhattan Supreme Court on Saturday against Cosby and his wife Camille, alleging they defaulted on a $17.5 million loan from April 2014 tied to their townhouse at 18 East 71st Street.
Purchased in 1987 for $6.2 million, the 12,000-square foot property was their primary residence. According to the lawsuit, the $17.5 million refers to the combined sum of two separate loans Cosby received over the years: a $12.25 million loan taken out from the Missouri-based firm CitiMortgage in 2010, and a $5.25 million loan received from Texas-based First Foundation in 2014. Cosby is accused of failing to make any payments on the loan since June 1, 2024.
On November 8, a lawyer for First Foundation wrote a warning letter to the Cosbys, informing them that they owed $791,500 stemming from principal and interest payments, as well as late fees and attorney fees.
“This is unacceptable, and the Lender has directed me to take all required action to extricate it from this situation with dispatch,” the letter says. It also mentioned a $500,000 loan Cosby defaulted on in October.
This is the latest legal and financial woe for the serial sex criminal once known as “America’s Dad”; the news comes less than a month after Cosby and his wife’s other Upper East Side property, located at 243 East 61st Street (between Second Avenue and Third Avenue) in Lenox Hill, was foreclosed on. The couple defaulted on a $4.2 million loan on the four-story property, which they purchased in April of 1980 for $327,250 through a trust.
Have a news tip? Send it to us here!
You’d think that a lawyer for his affairs/estate could have managed sales into the UES market to cover the loans (unless said lawyer has figured that it’s more profitable to walk away).