From top: Blusetone principals Eli Tabak, Marc Mendelsohn and Ari Bromberg; from left: 1585 and 1589 East 172nd Street

[Updated 12:06 p.m. at Sept. 16 with buyer information] The real estate investment firm the Bluestone Group, which denied for months it would unload a six-building portfolio of once severely distressed Bronx properties, sold the package for $17.6 million, a source close to the deal said.

The sale closed yesterday as part of a bankruptcy case filed by the former ownership company BXP 1, controlled by investor Susumu Endo. The buyer was Anthony Gazivoda, owner of Gazivoda Realty, a prominent landlord in the Bronx Albanian community, an employee at Gazicvod said. Gazivoda himself was not immediately available for comment. Bluestone, led by principals Eli Tabak, Ari Bromberg and Marc Mendelsohn, purchased the defaulted notes on the six properties, with a face value of $13.15 million, for about $10 million in June 2010, according to city property records. [more]

A group of Bronx housing advocates led by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr. rallied against the New York Community Bank which owns the debt on 34 foreclosed and decrepit buildings in the borough, the Tremont Tribune reported. The group is urging the bank to take responsibility for maintaining buildings that they’ve foreclosed on after issuing property owners unsustainable loans. The advocates say that New York Community Bank has a track record of
lending to “notoriously bad landowners,” and more than 10 percent of its mortgage portfolio is on foreclosed buildings that go long periods without heat, hot water, working elevators, proper ceilings and other basic maintenance. Comments

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The Riverton Houses and Larry Gluck

The new owners of the rent-stabilized Riverton Houses in Harlem that sold at auction yesterday will have to pay a hefty transfer tax of just under $4 million after they take title to the property in the next couple of days, real estate experts said. Financial firm CWCapital Asset Management, the special servicer for the loan on the 1,228-unit complex between 135th and 138th streets and Fifth Avenue and Harlem River Drive, won the property at an auction yesterday with a bid of $125 million. Since it was representing the commercial mortgage trust that held the Riverton loan, it effectively put the foreclosed property back into the hands of the lender. Tom Fink, senior vice president of Trepp, which tracks mortgage-based securities, estimated the tax liability to be $3.8 million. [more]

Housing code violations are piling up on 1520 Sedgwick Avenue in the western portion of the Bronx, the building credited as the site of hip-hop’s beginning in the 1970s, as residents of the building grow increasingly irritated with the building’s landlord, which bought the structure in 2008. Since that time, the number of building violations have leapt to 598 from 82, according to the New York Times, and residents at the 102-unit building are none too pleased. “Because it was well maintained [before it changed ownership] and families decided to stay there, relationships grew and it ended up leading to one of the most important cultural contributions in decades,” Dina Levy, a policy director with the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, said. “If that were to fall apart, it would be an indicator of what’s going to happen to communities that are stable in the outer boroughs.” The building first became famous for parties thrown in its community room by D.J. Kool Herc, an early innovator of hip-hop music.