From left: Rosewood's Aaron Jungreis and two of the properties at 200 East 18th Street and 350 East 19th Street

Multi-family real estate investment firm Shamah Properties has acquired a six-building, 376-unit Ditmas Park, Brooklyn portfolio for $42.1 million, Michael Kaplan, director of property management for Shamah, told The Real Deal today. The company, which launched a $50 million investment fund last year to acquire multi-family properties in New York City, closed on the portfolio April 19, which includes buildings at 2015 Foster Avenue, 1 St. Paul’s Court, 200 East 18th Street, 350 East 19th Street, 75 Hawthorne Street and 2101 Bedford Avenue. The deal has not yet hit public records. [more]

A site at 480 Stratford Road in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, where a seven-story apartment building is slated to rise, has become the focus of a zoning fight between Community Board 14 and the developer, Brooklyn Ink reported.

The developer, called 10 Stratford Associates, has agreed to buy the plot from Jay Loeffler, who had blueprints drafted for the apartment building before running into financial problems during the recession.

As part of a 2009 Flatbush rezoning, Ditmas Park went from a R6, which allowed multifamily dwellings to be built, to an R3X, which only allows single-family homes. [more]

City officials proposing to build a school on Caton Avenue near East 7th Street in Kensington were taken by surprise at a public hearing yesterday when the owner of half the site said that he wants to finish his own stalled residential project on the same land, the Brooklyn Paper reported. “This is the first we have been aware of it,” Tami Rachelson of the School Construction Authority told Community Board 7. If developer Robert Cherry gets the approval to restart his controversial project, the city would have to pay more to acquire the property. No residents spoke in support of Cherry’s 17-unit apartment building, and the board’s land use committee voted unanimously to advise the city to reject the zoning variance. [more]

Some Ditmas Park residents consider 90-year-old Mary Kay Gallagher the mayor of the Brooklyn micro-neighborhood bordered by Prospect Park, Avenue H, Coney Island Avenue and Ocean Avenue. Gallagher, who began selling real estate in the area 40 years ago under her eponymous firm, Mary Kay Gallagher Real Estate, has no plans to retire despite her age and a recent double-knee replacement surgery. Admirers credit her with preserving the historic neighborhood’s single-family homes and warding off the invasion of apartment buildings that swallowed many other Brooklyn neighborhoods. Others say she pushed minority buyers away from the most sought-after homes. Gallagher said she’s not a racist; she’s just always wanted to find owners who care about their properties and can afford to maintain them. “I live here. I care who moves in, because what happens to these houses matters to me,” she told the New York Times. In 2007, her company made more than $1 million. “Corcoran and those other ones who come over here from Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope are a thorn in my side, but I still have the best houses,” Gallagher said. “Most people who want to buy or sell a house in this neighborhood know enough to come see me. I am a resource. No one knows this neighborhood like I do.” [NYT]

Tenants at a deteriorating, 16-unit Ditmas Park apartment building are
taking their landlord to court over cracks in their walls, water damage
on their ceilings and other necessary repairs that they say have been
repeatedly ignored. The building’s address was not identified.The Department of Housing Preservation and Development has already billed the owner, East 22 Realty, for more than $17,000 in emergency repairs that the agency made at the company’s neglected properties since 2001. Last August, HPD filed a suit against the company, which had been hit 172 building code violations, leading the company to agree in January to pay fines and make repairs. The deadline for those repairs has passed, and tenants reportedly have not seen any upgrades — except to vacant apartments that the owner is hoping to rent out. Tenants are now going back to court to try to force the repairs, according to NY1. East 22 could be forced to pay as much as $125 per day for each violation. [NY1] [more]

Marty Markowitz has been renting his whole life, but the Brooklyn borough president is finally becoming a homeowner. Markowitz and his wife, Jamie, have swapped their Park Slope rental for a two-story, three-bedroom house in Windsor Terrace. The $1.45 million home, one block from Prospect Park, was purchased on Nov. 30. Markowitz took out a $417,000 mortgage on the home, the Daily News reported. An aide said $750,000 of the down payment came from the sale of the Manhattan Beach home inherited by Jamie Markowitz after her parents died, while the rest came from savings and a settlement in a slip-and-fall case. [NYDN]