Kushner Companies, the Midtown-based investment and development company headed by real estate wunderkind Jared Kushner, has racked up another significant acquisition, this time in Williamsburg.
The firm has acquired a 46-unit rental building at 50 North 1st Street, between Kent and Wythe avenues, for $33.8 million, Kushner’s spokesperson told The Real Deal exclusively.
The building, which totals about 54,699 square feet, per PropertyShark, had been owned by a partnership between Kevin Maloney’s Property Markets Group and Largo Investments, which acquired it for $10.49 million in 2011.
There were no brokers involved in the deal, the spokesperson said.
Over the past few years, Kushner Companies has been an active purchaser of both commercial and residential properties in New York. The company partnered with RFR Realty and Invesco to buy five Dumbo commercial buildings from the Jehovah’s Witnesses for $375 million in October. It’s also been snapping up Lower East Side multi-family units in bulk, buying more than 500 units this year alone.
Kushner said he sees this most recent purchase as a long-term investment for the company.
“Williamsburg is a tremendous area with real growth potential,” he said.
For PMG, which completed construction on the rental building after the previous developer fell into financial difficulties, the deal to sell the property completes its business plan, Maloney told TRD.
“We sell everything we do,” he said. “We’re not in the long-end real estate business. We build, we stabilize and we sell. If it’s a rental, we sell it to a third-party or REIT. If it’s a condo, we sell it [to the end user].”
Indeed, after constructing another rental development at 202 8th Street in Gowanus in partnership with Michael Stern’s JDS Development and leasing it successfully earlier this year, PMG sold the project to Werber Management for $37.75 million.
PMG bought the note on 50 North 1st Street in 2011, buying it from the bank after the previous developer, Israel Gold, defaulted. The firm eventually took title to the property in 2011, according to public records, and completed construction in 2012.