Sitt’s Thor buys three Manhattanville rentals for $34M

BCB owned the properties near Columbia University

556-566 West 126th Street in Manhattanville (inset: Joseph Sitt and Steven Vegh)
556-566 West 126th Street in Manhattanville (inset: Joseph Sitt and Steven Vegh)

Joseph Sitt’s Thor Equities picked up three adjacent rental buildings near Columbia University’s 17-acre expansion of the Manhattanville campus, paying $34.4 million to Bennat Charatan Berger’s BCB Property Management, sources told The Real Deal.

The six-story properties at 556-558, 560-562 and 564-566 West 126th Street span a combined 52,000 square feet, and hold 58 four-bedroom apartments and five retail units.

The deal closed Wednesday for north of $660 per square foot. Thor plans to treat the portfolio purchase as an investment, sources said.

“Columbia University’s expansion is poised to further transform the 125th Street corridor and surrounding area,” Sitt said in a statement.

Westwood Realty Associates’ Steven Vegh, who brokered the off-market transaction, declined to comment.

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About 35 of the apartments are rent-stabilized units. Average monthly rents for the market-rate apartments are $3,675, records show.

BCB owned the buildings relatively briefly; the Midtown-based investment firm acquired the properties in two separate transactions for a combined $23.5 million in 2013 and 2014.

Sitt has been active recently with single-building purchases of Upper Manhattan multifamily assets. In May, Thor bought a Morningside Heights rental property for $30 million.

Although Berger runs BCB Property Management, he is also one-half of Novel Property Ventures, a joint venture he launched in August with fellow multifamily investor Andrew Miller.