Slate Property Group

Slate Property Group is a full-service real estate development and investment firm. Founded in 2014 by Martin Nussbaum and David Schwartz, Slate is focused on acquiring and developing new residential, mixed-use and retail projects in the New York metropolitan area. (Nussbaum had co-founded Silverstone Property Group five years earlier, before breaking away from the larger firm)

The firm hit the ground running, splitting its business into ground-up development primarily in Brooklyn and multifamily condos in downtown Manhattan. Slate helped to develop a $100 million mixed-use residential and retail property in Park Slope early that year and a 20-unit apartment building down the street. In 2015, Slate made it to the big leagues with its $390 million purchase of the RiverTower apartment building in Midtown East.

But 2016 brought controversy with Slate's purchase of Rivington House, a Lower East Side nursing home that closed in 2015. A politically connected nursing home company acquired the property after the closure and convinced the city to lift a restriction on the property’s deed that required it to be operated as a nursing home, then flipped it to Slate to develop into condos in a deal arranged before the restriction was lifted. Outrage over the deal prompted the city to boot Slate from the city-backed Bedford Armory redevelopment in Crown Heights. Slate and its partners end up abandoning their condo plans, and in 2019 sold the property at 45 Rivington Street for a $43 million profit.

In its first five years, Slate amassed a portfolio in excess of $4 billion in real estate assets totaling over 4,000 units across approximately 50 investments.