Stuyvesant Town and Caiola portfolio are hard acts to follow, but the city’s biggest multifamily investors are leaving it all on the negotiating table in 2016.
Why wait for New Year’s to look back on who’s dropped the most coin? The Real Deal combed through the year’s biggest multifamily deals to date, and laid it all out, from Downtown, to Harlem, to the Bronx.
The year’s biggest deal to date falls far short of last year’s titanic trades: Rockpoint Group dropped just $430 million or so for two Wall Street residential towers with 810 units (Stuy Town, you may remember, hit $5.3 billion). The second largest involved Emerald Equity Group’s Isaac Kassirer, who paid over $350 million for a collection of East Harlem buildings with a colorful history. Kassirer also struck the fifth biggest multifamily buy this year, grabbing a swath of rent-stabilized apartments in the Bronx.
Deals announced late last year, which closed in 2016, were excluded.
Rockpoint’s Kieth Gelb and 63 and 67 Wall Street
1) 63 and 67 Wall Street
Price: more than $430 million (in contract)
Buyer: Rockpoint Group | Seller: DTH Capital and Metro Loft Management
Alexander Hamilton, godfather of American federalism, once had his offices at the Downtown luxury conversion that is the most expensive multifamily transaction of 2016 thus far. Clearly, this is what the founders intended. Boston-based private equity giant Rockpoint Group went into contract on the luxury rentals known as the Crest at 63 and 67 Wall Street in April, according to the Post. The $430 million bill comes down to $545,000 per apartment. There are 808 units split between the addresses. 63 and 67 Wall Street were converted with the help of the 421g tax abatement, which they still benefit from, and which required the units, even the ones that lease in excess of $5,000 a month, to be rent-stabilized.
From left: 112 East 103rd Street, 411 East 118th Street and 291 Pleasant Avenue in East Harlem (inset: Stephen Siegel and Shimon Shkury)
2) Dawnay Day Portfolio
Price: more than $350 million (in contract)
Buyer: Isaac Kassirer | Seller: Fairstead Capital, E&M Associates
Bronx investor Isaac Kassirer is on a bit of a speculation tear, with the more than $350 million “Dawnay Day” portfolio being the biggest bet of them all. Kassirer, head of Emerald Equity Group, went into contract yesterday for 47 rent-stabilized buildings in East Harlem. The Dawnay Day buildings were no longer owned by the defunct British firm of the same name at deal time, but instead by Fairstead Capital and E&M Associates, two large, multifamily landlords who snapped the buildings out of foreclosure in 2009. The 47-building roster holds 1,181 units, which comes out to about $300,000 per rental unit for the sale, or 15 percent of the average price of a condominium in Manhattan (yikes). And it isn’t the only splash Kassirer has made so far this year (keep reading).
Fairstead Capital’s Stephen Siegel, L+M’s Ron Moelis (Credit: STUDIO SCRIVO) and Savoy Park in Harlem
3) Savoy Park
Price: more than $300 million (in contract)
Buyer: Fairstead Capital | Seller: L+M Development Partners, Savanna, others
It’s one of the the largest affordable housing complexes in Manhattan and it’s coming up on three owners in a span of four years. News broke in February that Fairstead Capital was in contract to buy the seven-building Savoy Park in Harlem from L+M Development Partners and investors. L+M had bought the building in 2012 after Vantage Properties ran into financial trouble while trying to deregulate hundreds of regulated units there (and later legal trouble for overcharging tenants). Once L+M took over they soon attempted to lure investors with a NOI-juicing plan to get an extra $912 a month per pad, but apparently didn’t get the right bites, as the complex went into contract for a price rumored to exceed $300 million just a few months later. And considering that L+M paid $210 million for Savoy Park in 2012, the closing amount should pay out nicely for the affordable housing specialists.
From left: Bob Faith, 160 West 24th Street and a rendering of 247 North 7th Street
4.) The Chelsea at 160 West 24th Street
Price: $211.3 million (closed)
Buyer: Greystar Real Estate Partners | Seller: LaSalle Investment Management
Greystar Real Estate Partners may have sold a vast, 10,399-unit New York area portfolio to Blackstone Group for $2 billion last year, but that didn’t mean the company was done doing business in the city. In March, the Charleston, S.C.-based fund manager paid $211.3 million for the 204-unit, 204,000-square-foot rental building at 160 West 24th Street, known as the Chelsea. The company bought two more rental buildings — at 247 North 7th Street and 248 North 8th Street in Williamsburg — around the same time for $125 million. “What’s not to like about the fact that you’re in New York, one of the great cities in the world,” Bob Faith, Greystar’s CEO, told The Real Deal at the time. The company plans to upgrade the Chelsea and charge higher rents.
From left: Harbor Group’s Jordan Slone, 769 Bryant Avenue in the Bronx and Hodges Ward Elliott’s Will Silverman
5.) Nearly 1,000 Bronx apartments
Price: $140 million (closed)
Buyer: Isaac Kassirer, Harbor Group, York Equities Seller: Jerome Associates
Isaac Kassirer, in his second appearance on this list, bought 38 Bronx buildings containing 935 rent-stabilized apartments for $140 million in March along with partners York Equities and Jordan Slone’s Harbor Group International, the largest investment sale in the Bronx since 2013. Buildings in the portfolio, which also included 24 retail spaces, were located in Mott Haven, Hunts Point, Lower Concourse, Little Italy, Belmont, Fordham and Belmont Park.