Manhattan’s 10 highest-earning rental complexes

Stuy Town is king, but 666 Greenwich gets the biggest bang for its buck: DOF

top-10-rental-buildings
Clockwise from left: 666 Greenwich Street, Herald Towers, Windsor Court and Stuy-Town

You knew the rent was too damn high, but what you didn’t know is that it only takes 10 developments to net landlords over half a billion dollars in a single year.

The top rental complexes in Manhattan, ranked by net operating income, brought in landlords $513 million in 2014, according to TRData’s analysis of just-released data from the Department of Finance.

Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village was responsible for over half that haul, with an NOI of over $220 million (aside: that’s well below the at least $375 million former owner MetLife once told prospective buyers the property would be making by now). The 11,200-unit complex, which holds more than 5,000 rent-stabilized units, saw an NOI per unit of just shy of $20,000. That’s well below the figure seen at market-rate projects such as Rockrose Development’s 666 Greenwich Street, which led the pack with a per-unit NOI of over $57,000.

That 479-unit loft-style building , dubbed the Archive, has quite a lot going for it. For one, because of its participation in a state-sponsored tax abatement program, Rockrose owed the city zip in property taxes for the complex in both 2014 and 2015, DOF records show. Rents at the building average just over $5,000 a month, according to Streeteasy. The Archive was the eighth most-profitable complex by overall NOI ($27.3 million) and the smallest building in the top ten by unit count.

(The data is based on the DOF’s calculations of NOI, which is based on Real Property Income and Expense (RPIE) that property owners submit. Note that this NOI number may differ from NOI figures estimated by outside institutions.)

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Rental buildings with highest NOI
RankAddressOwnerResidential unitsNOINOI Per Unit
1Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper VillageBlackstone Group and Ivanhoe Cambridge11,250$221.5 million$19,691
2594 10 AvenueRelated Companies1,689$43.4 million$25,710
3397 South End AvenueLefrak Organization1,712$43.2 million$25,247
4310 Greenwich StreetStellar Management1,328$34.8 million$26,205
5Baruch Houses (288 Delancey Street)New York City Housing Authority2,391$33 million$13,786
61282 BroadwayJEMB Realty690$28.6 million$41,417
7Windsor Court, 151 East 31 StreetOgden CAP Properties709$28.1 million$39,596
8666 Greenwich StreetRockrose Development479$27.3 million$57,016
91849 2 AvenueOgden CAP Properties1,092$26.6 million$24,354
10Waterside PlazaRichard Ravitch1,101$26.6 million$24,121
Source: TRData analysis of Dept. of Finance assessment records. The NOI figures are estimates based on income and expense figures for 2014. Owners are current owner, not necessarily the owner in 2014.

Related Companies’  four-building, 1,689-unit Manhattan Plaza at 594 Tenth Avenue was the second-biggest earner on the list after Stuy Town, with an NOI of $43.4 million in 2014.

OgdenCAP Properties is the only landlord to appear twice in the top 10. Its Windsor Court apartments at 151 East 31st Street had an NOI of  $28.1 million, or a per-unit average of $39,596. And Its 1849 2nd Avenue in Yorkville reaped an NOI of $26.6 million, or $24,354 per unit.

Perhaps the most peculiar entry among the top-netting properties of 2014 Is 288 Delancey Street, a public housing project that finds itself sandwiched between luxury doorman buildings on this list. The New York City Public Housing Authority, which is known to be struggling financially, is well in the black at at least one of its many complexes citywide. The Baruch Houses, which holds nearly 2,400 units across 18 buildings and is named for the financier once known as “The Lone Wolf of Wall Street,” managed to net $13,786 per apartment in 2014, for an overall NOI of $33 million.