Silverstone Property Group has sold a West Village multi-family building for $19.2 million, after buying it for $11.3 million just over a year ago, the company told The Real Deal exclusively.
The six-story, 21,364-square-foot building is located at 143-145 West 4th Street between Sixth Avenue and MacDougal Street and has 26 apartments. Silverstone bought the property in August 2012 and proceeded to gut renovate all the market-rate units and converted some of the three-bedroom units into five-bedrooms, said Marcus & Millichap’s Joseph Koicim, who along with colleagues Peter Von Der Ahe and Sean Lefkovits represented the buyer and seller the transaction.
“We were able to reposition and resell the property way ahead of our initial schedule and the results speak for themselves,” Silverstone principal Martin Nussbaum said of the deal. Earlier this week, Nussbaum announced that he was starting his own real estate investment firm, as The Real Deal reported, but said he will continue to be involved with Silverstone. Silverstone has said, however, that Nussbaum has no more ties to the company.
The buyer was a private investor who purchased the property through a 1031 exchange and currently owns only one other building in Chinatown, Koicim said. “We’re adept at finding these kind of buyers,” he added.
The brokers declined to name the buyer, and the sale, which closed today, is yet to hit public records.
A growing number of investors are opting for 1031 exchanges – which allow an investor to defer capital gains taxes if the proceeds from the sale of one property, which has been owned for at least a year, are used to buy another similar property within 180 days — in the wake of tax code changes that have increased the burden on selling real estate.
Silverstone has been a prominent player in New York’s mid-sized acquisition market in the last few years, having acquired at least 22 properties worth some $345 million since 2010. The deals include the acquisition of a seven-building Kips Bay residential portfolio in partnership with Ari Shalam’s RWN Real Estate Partners for $71.5 million in September of this year, and a 128-unit, 17-story Murray Hill building at 247 East 28th Street for $53 million, also in partnership with RWN, as The Real Deal reported.