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Goldman Sachs buying $90M Brooklyn Heights apartments

RAL Companies and China Vanke developed 15 Bridge Park Drive

Goldman Sachs' David Solomon and 15 Brooklyn Park Drive (Streeteasy, Getty)
Goldman Sachs' David Solomon and 15 Bridge Park Drive (Streeteasy, Getty)

Goldman Sachs’s real estate fund is back in New York with a deal to buy a rental building developed as part of Brooklyn Bridge Park for $90 million.

The investment bank’s asset management arm is in contract to buy the 140-unit The Landing building from Robert Levine’s RAL Companies and China Vanke, The Real Deal has learned.

The deal is the latest example of investors’ appetite for cash-flowing New York rental properties, which are leading a surge in multifamily investments as buyers largely shun older, rent-stabilized buildings.

Although the 15-story building at 15 Bridge Park Drive has an unusually large rent-restricted component — 70 percent of the units as opposed to the typical 30 percent — it benefits from a 35-year tax break under a PILOT abatement program. The tax break in effect makes the property more similar to a free-market building than a rent-stabilized one.

Representatives for Goldman Sachs and RAL Companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Goldman is buying the building with the Dermot Company.

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Out of the 100 rent-restricted units, 50 percent are set at rents that are 165 percent of the area median income, according to marketing materials from Cushman & Wakefield, where a team led by Adam Spies and Adam Doneger brokered the sale.

Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation, the non-profit that oversees the 85-acre park, selected Levine’s development firm in 2015 through an RFP process to develop two parcels adjacent to the green space in order to help finance the park.

RAL’s bid, which included a $106 million upfront payment, bested offers from 13 other developers. In addition to the 140-unit rental, RAL also developed the 126-unit Quay Tower condominium building next door.

The developer completed the building in March 2020.

Goldman got back into New York real estate two years ago as part of a relaunch of its once-dominant investment program. The company in 2020 paid $100 million to buy the 19-story 1 Flatbush Avenue apartment building in Downtown Brooklyn.

It was Goldman’s first New York acquisition since launching its real estate funds business, which set the template for risky, high-return opportunistic investments in the 1990s and early 2000s before suffering major losses during the Great Financial Crisis.

More recently, Goldman announced it had raised $3.5 billion for its latest real estate fund, which it said in April will focus on core-plus and value-add opportunities in logistics, residential and office buildings.

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Brooklyn Bridge ParkChina VankeGoldman SachsRal Companies