From left: Russell Appell, president of Praedium, and exterior and interior shots of 109 Gold Street
A recently completed condominium building at 109 Gold Street in Vinegar Hill, which The Real Deal yesterday reported was purchased by the Praedium Group in a partnership with North End Equities earlier this month, is going rental, MNS, the exclusive marketing agent for the property, said yesterday. [more]
From left: Russell Appell, president of the Praedium Group, Floyd Lattin, CIO of Praedium and 109 Gold Street
The Praedium Group, a New York City-based real estate investment firm focusing on underperforming and undervalued assets, has purchased a troubled 33-unit condominium project at 109 Gold Street, the former site of St. George’s Church in Vinegar Hill, Brooklyn, in partnership with North End Equities for $14.5 million, according to public records filed with the city today, just six months after the development finally obtained its temporary certificate of occupancy. [more]
A partnership including Joel Wiener’s Pinnacle Group and Praedium Group of New York is in talks with special servicer LNR Partners to convert more than 1,000 Upper West Side rental units into condominiums in the face of mounting financial pressure, according to the Wall Street Journal. The units are located in 36 mostly rent-regulated buildings, on which the partnership has a $192 million mortgage that became delinquent earlier this month. Pinnacle and Praedium, who are together among New York’s largest apartment owners, purchased the buildings with the intent of converting their units into market-rate rentals, but as it did for other boom-time investors, that strategy has proven difficult. According to Trepp, they are hoping that selling off the units as condos will boost property values. The delinquent mortgage isn’t the only quandary Wiener and Pinnacle are facing: they are also in the midst of a class-action lawsuit from a group of tenants that claim to have been harassed while the company carried out a plan to illegally inflate rents at their buildings. Wiener’s attorney has called the suit unfounded, but a settlement conference is scheduled. [WSJ]
A partnership including Joel Wiener’s Pinnacle Group and Praedium Group of New York is in talks with special servicer LNR Partners to convert more than 1,000 Upper West Side rental units into condominiums in the face of mounting financial pressure, according to the Wall Street Journal. The units are located in 36 mostly rent-regulated buildings, on which the partnership has a $192 million mortgage that became delinquent earlier this month. Pinnacle and Praedium, who are together among New York’s largest apartment owners, purchased the buildings with the intent of converting their units into market-rate rentals, but as it did for other boom-time investors, that strategy has proven difficult. According to Trepp, they are hoping that selling off the units as condos will boost property values. The delinquent mortgage isn’t the only quandary Wiener and Pinnacle are facing: they are also in the midst of a class-action lawsuit from a group of tenants that claim to have been harassed while the company carried out a plan to illegally inflate rents at their buildings. Wiener’s attorney has called the suit unfounded, but a settlement conference is scheduled. [WSJ]
A partnership including Joel Wiener’s Pinnacle Group and Praedium Group of New York is in talks with special servicer LNR Partners to convert more than 1,000 Upper West Side rental units into condominiums in the face of mounting financial pressure, according to the Wall Street Journal. The units are located in 36 mostly rent-regulated buildings, on which the partnership has a $192 million mortgage that became delinquent earlier this month. Pinnacle and Praedium, who are together among New York’s largest apartment owners, purchased the buildings with the intent of converting their units into market-rate rentals, but as it did for other boom-time investors, that strategy has proven difficult. According to Trepp, they are hoping that selling off the units as condos will boost property values. The delinquent mortgage isn’t the only quandary Wiener and Pinnacle are facing: they are also in the midst of a class-action lawsuit from a group of tenants that claim to have been harassed while the company carried out a plan to illegally inflate rents at their buildings. Wiener’s attorney has called the suit unfounded, but a settlement conference is scheduled. [WSJ]
Despite word from apartment investors that the tough economy has forced a sharp rise in the number of tenants paying late or not at all over the past year, the volume of such cases being brought to landlord and tenant courts in the city rose just modestly in the first 10 months of the year, court records show.
The number of nonpayment cases filed in landlord and tenant courts in the five boroughs through October rose by 5.3 percent to 188,381 in 2009 from 178,752 in 2008, data from the Clerk of the Civil Court of New York City shows.
The steepest rise was 9.6 percent in Queens, while in only one borough, Staten Island, filings declined, by 11 percent. The increase in Manhattan was 5.6 percent to 43,321 cases.
The cases are filed in civil courts in the five boroughs for the first 10 terms of the year, with each term slightly shorter than a month.
Landlord and tenant attorney Todd Nahins, a partner at Borah, Goldstein, Altschuler, Nahins & Goidel, said the low numbers were unexpected. More
The percent of residential apartment dwellers in the city who are not paying their rent has as much as quadrupled since the market weakened last year, industry leaders on a panel discussing multi-family properties said today.
“Collections, especially in New York City, have become more of an issue,” said Mark Stern, senior vice president at Waterton Residential, a Chicago-based building owner and operator. His firm is planning on making acquisitions in New York City.
“[They are] going from the 5 percent range to now 10 or 20 percent in collections, which makes a difference on the bottom line,” he said.
Mason Sleeper, a principal with the real estate investment firm Praedium Group, said he has seen a similar distress in the market.
“You have your collection issue which is increasingly creeping up to becoming a little bit of a problem,” he said.
They were speaking on a panel that also included Kevin Davis, partner of Area Property Partners; Tim Wang, vice president at ING Clarion and Max Herzog, senior vice president at CB Richard Ellis. The panel, moderated by Mike Kelly, president of Caldera Asset Management, was part of a day-long forum covering multi-family real estate organized by GreenPearl. [more]
