Investors tied to 199 Lee sell eight-building Bronx-centric portfolio

Michael Rubin's CapX buys 226 apartments for $35M

From left: 41 West 184th Street and 2291 University Avenue
From left: 41 West 184th Street and 2291 University Avenue

Long Island landlord Michael Rubin picked up an eight-building Bronx-centric multifamily package for $35 million, sources told The Real Deal. It’s the third time the properties have traded in five years.

The 226-unit package consists of six buildings in the Bronx and two in Marble Hill, the northernmost neighborhood in Manhattan. The seller is Paradise Management, a group of Brooklyn-based investors with a mailing address at the notorious LLC farm 199 Lee Avenue in Williamsburg.

In recent years, the buildings shifted from the hands of major landlords – Irving Langer’s E&M Associates and Philip Eisenberg’s Urban American Management – to lesser-known real estate players.

The properties were part of a 13-building portfolio that Paradise bought in 2014 from E&M for $53.7 million. Before that, in 2012, E&M had bought the 13 buildings from Urban American for $37 million.

Westwood Realty Associates’ Steven Vegh, who represented both sides in the deal, declined to comment. Neither Rubin nor Paradise could be immediately reached.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

By signing up, you agree to TheRealDeal Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy.

Steven Vegh

The portfolio deal closed earlier this week for about $155,000 per unit, sources said.

The Bronx addresses are 41 West 184th Street, 2291 University Avenue and 2322 Grand Avenue in University Heights; 226 West Tremont Avenue and 1631 Grand Avenue in Morris Heights and 1786 Topping Avenue in Mount Hope. The Marble Hill addresses are 151 and 159 West 228th Street.

Rubin, a Cedarhurst-based investor affiliated with CapX Holdings, mostly owns Bronx multifamily buildings but also properties in other boroughs. He sold two Bronx buildings at 65 Jesup Place and 1465 Jesup Avenue in January for a combined $14.5 million, after buying them for $7.9 million in 2014.

Paradise had already sold a property among the original 13 – a 66-unit rental at 11 West 172nd Street that controversial landlord Ved Parkash bought in February for $10.5 million.