Debrah Lee Charatan’s BCB Property Management is in the process of selling off much of its real estate holdings. The latest batch to hit the market is a six-building portfolio with a price tag of $125 million, or $930 per square foot, the firm told The Real Deal.
The package contains five rental buildings on the Upper West Side and one in Morningside Heights, all in close proximity to Columbia University. Together, the buildings hold 152 rental units and five retail spaces, and span nearly 135,000 square feet.
A Cushman & Wakefield team led by Robert Shapiro and Hall Oster is marketing the portfolio for sale – either as four separate packages or as one big one. If sold separately, the individual asking prices are: $48 million for three contiguous buildings at 3143-3149 Broadway; $36 million for 500 Cathedral Parkway; $29 million for 111 West 104th Street; and $12 million for 242 West 109th Street, the brokers said.
The portfolio comes with a combined 38,300 square feet in air rights, the brokers said.
Charatan’s Union Square-based multifamily investment firm bought the buildings for $80.8 million in 2014 from Florida-based investor Arnold Wax, who had owned them for more than three decades. Since then, the firm made upgrades to all six buildings, especially the ones at 500 Cathedral Parkway and 3143-3149 Broadway. Those four buildings have mostly market-rate units. The other two have mostly rent-stabilized units.
Average market-rate rents are about $4,000 per month at 500 Cathedral Parkway and about $3,000 per month at The Broadway buildings, sources said.
The buildings are located in “one of New York City’s most supply constrained and fundamentally sound housing markets,” Oster said.
For years, Charatan ran BCB with her son Bennat Charatan Berger, who launched a new company last year called Novel Property Ventures with former Excelsior Equities chief Andrew Miller.
Sources said BCB currently owns roughly 25 rental buildings in the city, while Novel owns 18.
BCB has slowed down its purchases as of late and has focused on selling. It is unclear how many buildings the firm wants to sell in total.
Earlier this year, the firm sold three Manhattanville rental buildings to Thor Equities for $34.4 million.