Lender To Auction Off Houston Office Buildings With LA Luxury Real Estate Ties
The owner of two office buildings near George Bush Intercontinental Airport is staring down foreclosure after defaulting on a nearly $13M loan, public filings indicate.
Lender Miranda Office Partners has scheduled a foreclosure auction for April 1 for the Gateway I and II office buildings at 3663 N. Sam Houston Parkway E. and 15333 John F. Kennedy Blvd., respectively. Legal filings also show the owner faces a lawsuit from a contractor that claims it was not paid for more than $1M worth of remediation work after Hurricane Beryl last year.
The owner of the buildings is Gateway Houston Partners LLC, which was registered to Los Angeles-based luxury homebuilder Mauricio Oberfeld at the time of sale in 2013.
In recent years, the LLC has been managed by Ber Oberfeld, who has little online presence and declined to comment when reached out to by Bisnow.
Mauricio Oberfeld told Bisnow that he has “had nothing to do with these buildings” since 2018, and didn't respond when asked the nature of his connection to Ber Oberfeld.
His exit would have been shortly after Mauricio Oberfeld worked with The Agency founder and reality television star Mauricio Umansky to flip a Malibu mansion for $70M, which later resulted in both men being sued before the lawsuit was ultimately dropped.
The Houston office buildings are worth far less than that house. The 327K SF Gateway II was valued at $6.4M last year, according to Harris Central Appraisal District, and the 209K SF Gateway I was appraised for about $4.7M.
Ber Oberfeld and Miranda Office Partners agreed in 2021 to reduce the loan’s outstanding balance to $4.5M, according to a loan modification agreement. The document identifies Illinois-based private real estate investor and lender Bixby Bridge Capital as Miranda Office Partners’ general partner. Bixby Bridge Capital did not respond to Bisnow’s request for comment.
The modification agreement extended the loan’s maturity date to July 2024 — the same month that Hurricane Beryl hit Houston. Paul Davis Restoration performed remediation and restoration services on damage to the Gateway properties in July and August 2024 but wasn't paid for $1.7M worth of work, according to a lawsuit.
The contractor placed a lien on the property in October, then sued Gateway Houston Partners in the District Court of Harris County on Jan. 27. The LLC was not served with the lawsuit until last week, online records show, and no response has been filed.
The attorney representing Paul Davis Restoration didn't respond to a request for comment.
Avison Young manages the Gateway properties, according to its website. When reached by email for comment, a property manager said “Feel free to contact us after April 1,” which is the date of the scheduled foreclosure auction.
