From left: Ben Shaoul and 254 Front Street

Ben Shaoul’s Magnum Real Estate Group has sold a high-end rental property in the Financial District to Queens-based construction and management firm Werber Management for $25 million, according to records filed with the city yesterday. [more]

John Penley

UPDATED, 6:38 p.m., April 4: An anarchist activist who pledged to camp out in front of the offices of Ben Shaoul’s Magnum Real Estate Group this weekend has called off the protest, EV Grieve reported. Instead, the East Village’s John Penley has decided to hold a meeting.

Originally, Penley planned the weekend sit-in to call attention to the allegedly bad conditions of Taylor Mead, an elderly tenant in a Shaoul-owned property. [more]

John Penley (credit: the Villager)

An East Village activist is planning to camp out this weekend in front of Ben Shaoul’s Magnum Real Estate Group office in Soho to protest the allegedly poor apartment conditions of one 88-year-old tenant in a Shaoul-owned building, EV Grieve reported. The activist, John Penley, hopes to provide the elder tenant with a renovated, rent-free ground-floor unit in the same building and home-care assistance for the rest of the man’s life. [more]

From left: Jared Kushner, 201 East 2nd Street, 435 East 12th Street and 211 Avenue A (credits: PropertyShark)

The East Village is a playground for New York City’s urban trendsetters, drawing them to its trendy bars and restaurants in century-old walk-ups. But the neighborhood has also been a battleground for decades between tenants and their advocates allied against residential landlords seeking to profit from the ever-rising rents in the apartments above. [more]

From left: Jared Kushner, 118 and 120 East 4th Street

A group of tenants in the East Village — who live in the cluster of buildings that Jared Kushner recently purchased from Ben Shaoul — are planning to meet to discuss their experiences living in the properties, EV Grieve reported. Though an email announcing the meeting did not specifically mention past problems with Shaoul’s Magnum Real Estate Group, the landlord has earned a reputation for controversy in the neighborhood and beyond. Last winter, tenants complained about unsupervised construction work happening at the buildings, at 118 and 120 East 4th Street, according to the blog Occupy East 4th Street. [more]

From left: David Ash, Jared Kushner, Aaron Jungreis and 195 E. 4th St.

UPDATED 11:00 a.m., Feb. 6: The Kushner Companies extended a Manhattan apartment acquisition binge last month by signing a contract to buy seven walk-up rental buildings in the East Village for $49 million from developer Ben Shaoul’s Magnum Real Estate Group and Meadow Partners, several sources said. The seven buildings have a total of 115 apartments and one store. Among the residential units, 28 are rent stabilized and the rest are free market, insiders said. [more]

From left: the East Village and Jared Kushner

UPDATED, 11:25 a.m., Feb. 6: A joint venture between Jared Kushner and an unnamed international investor has closed on a portfolio of 17 walk-up apartment buildings in Downtown Manhattan for a total of about $130 million, a source told The Real Deal. The buildings are situated between East 2nd and East 13th streets, First Avenue and Avenue B, in the East Village. [more]

Ben Shaoul and 167, 165 and 163 Ludlow Street

Controversial landlord Ben Shaoul continues to expand his empire south. The owner of an estimated 40 properties in the East Village, Shaoul’s Magnum Real Estate bought three buildings on the Lower East Side earlier this summer for $16.5 million, Lo-Down NY reported. The properties are a trio of five-story walk-up apartment buildings at 163, 165 and 167 Ludlow Street, between Stanton and East Houston streets, that each contain between 15 and 20 units and ground-floor commercial spaces.

The buildings were one half of a six-property portfolio being marketed by Michael Besen and Matthew Slonim of Besen & Associates for an asking price of $35 million. [more]

Ben Shaoul, president of Magnum Real Estate, and the Brooklyn Bridge

A new Lower Manhattan luxury rental building designed to reflect the semi-industrial feel of the old South Street Seaport, will be completed next month after years of delays, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The building, at 254 Front Street, at Dover Street, near the South Street Seaport, was purchased in 2004 by developer Barry Akrongold and was planned to be condominiums. However, the project’s lender, the Bank of Smithtown, never funded the construction, and Ben Shaoul’s Magnum Real Estate bought the project, though no date is listed in the Journal article or on Streeteasy.com. The controversial developer then turned the building into rentals. [more]

Ben Shaoul and the Cabrini nursing center

Negotiations to preserve the Cabrini Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation failed, and the East Village facility will close this summer, EV Grieve reported, to make way for a condominium development by Magnum Real Estate President Ben Shaoul.

Shaoul acquired the 84,000-square-foot building, at 542 East 5th Street, for $25.5 million in November and reports immediately began circulating that the center would close. [more]