BCB Property Management’s Bennat Charatan Berger and Excelsior Equities’ Andrew Miller have teamed up to form a new investment firm, The Real Deal has learned. The company, Novel Property Ventures, burst out of the gate with a Central Harlem multifamily portfolio buy for $35 million.
Treetop Development, a Teaneck, N.J.-based firm led by Adam Mermelstein, sold the 12-building, 132-unit package, which it purchased in 2013 for $22 million.
Together, the properties span roughly 130,000 square feet and include three retail spaces. Berger and Miller plan to renovate the properties, reduce violations and continue operating them as rentals.
“We are getting in at a good basis,” Berger told TRD, “and we like the direction this part of Harlem is going in.” Average rents in Central Harlem are north of $2,500 per month, according to MNS data.
Most of the buildings have some frontage on West 122nd Street. The addresses are 234-262 West 122nd Street, 2268 and 2500 Frederick Douglass Boulevard, 222 St. Nicholas Avenue and 262 West 115th Street.
The buyers declined to comment on the status of their respective investment firms. Berger also runs Midtown-based BCB Property Management with his mother, Debrah Lee Charatan, while Miller heads Union City, N.J.-based Excelsior Equities.
Steven Vegh of Westwood Realty Associates represented both sides in the deal.
Treetop recently sold a five-story rental building at 17 West 125th Street to Joseph Sitt’s Thor Equities for $30.6 million. Vegh also brokered that deal, which closed last week.