Fleeing New York: Investor Elliot Sohayegh buys North Beach rental portfolio

New York investor Elliot Sohayegh paid about $16.6 million for a portfolio of apartments in North Beach, The Real Deal has learned.

Boardwalk Properties sold the 103-unit portfolio in Miami Beach to Sohayegh, records show. The units are nearly all rented out and were recently renovated, said Arman Amirianfar of Douglas Elliman, who represented the buyer. Laura Veitia of Urban Resource LLC represented the seller. The deal closed on Tuesday.

Amirianfar said the buyer is shifting his attention from New York now that the state legislature passed sweeping rent regulation reform last month that dramatically limits how landlords can increase rents on stabilized apartments.

In North Beach, the properties are at: 7745 and 8400 Harding Avenue; 7609, 7617 and 7625 Carlyle Avenue; 321 to 333 84th Street; 335 75th Street; and 525 76th Street. The buildings were built between 1941 and 1958. The smallest building, at 525 76th Street, has six units, while the largest, at 7745 Harding Avenue, has 26 units.

The overall price equates to about $161,000 per unit.

Sohayegh declined to comment on the purchase.

The majority of the units are studios, one- and two-bedroom apartments as small as 500 square feet and as large as 1,000 square feet. All of the leases are for 12 months.

Two of the buildings, at 7745 and 8400 Harding Avenue, allow for short-term rentals, Amirianfar said. In 2016, Miami Beach created a short-term rental district in North Beach, along Harding Avenue from 87th Street south to 73rd Street.

Developers are increasingly turning to North Beach, where property owners are now able to build twice as much as they were previously allowed in the North Beach Town Center District, which mainly consists of retail plazas, vacant lots and apartment buildings between Indian Creek Drive, Dickens Avenue, 72nd Street, Collins Avenue and 69th Street.

Boardwalk Properties, a Miami Beach-based company owned by the Gober family trust and Adam Walker, owns apartment buildings in South Beach, Bay Harbor Islands, Fort Lauderdale and Davie. Earlier this year, the company listed a portfolio of more than 100 apartment units in South Beach with Cushman & Wakefield with an expected sales price of $27 million.

In December, Boardwalk Properties paid $119 million for a nearly 400-unit apartment complex in Davie.