Trion looks to sell five-building Upper Manhattan portfolio

Carmelo Milio’s Trion Real Estate Management is looking to sell a five-building Upper Manhattan multifamily portfolio, sources told The Real Deal.

The 126,000-square-foot package holds 111 rental units and 17 retail spaces. Sources familiar with the buildings estimated they would fetch as much as $80 million, on par with a low-4 cap rate.

Trion has not owned them for long. The Yonkers-based investment firm bought the buildings in two separate deals in 2015 and 2016, for a combined $52.7 million. The firm bought the six-story, 52-unit building at 2143 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard in Harlem for $21.5 million and the four others at 554-558 and 565 West 181st Street in Washington Heights for $31.2 million.

The buildings have a mix of free-market and rent-stabilized units, though the Harlem building is 54 percent free-market, said Trion’s Louis Pfaff, who led the acquisition. Since the acquisitions, Trion brought both the apartments and retail spaces to full occupancy, Pfaff added.

“We enhanced the properties by raising the rent roll and making capital improvements throughout,” Pfaff said.

Ackman-Ziff Real Estate’s Jason Meister, Marion Jones and Alan Goodkin, who are marketing the portfolio as a value-add opportunity, declined to comment. Meister and Jones were recently promoted to managing directors at the firm, which is looking to ramp up its investment-sales practice.

The portfolio’s in-place net operating income is $2.96 million, marketing materials show. More than 30 percent of the stabilized units at the Washington Heights building and 15 percent of those at the Harlem property can be converted over the next few years, according to the documents.

If the buildings were to sell for $80 million, it would mark a serious price appreciation – nearly 150 percent – in just five years. Treetop Development, which later sold the Harlem building to Trion, paid $8.7 million for it in 2012. Crest Realties and Guardian Realty Management, which later sold the Washington Heights properties to Trion, paid $23.5 million for them in 2014.

The Upper Manhattan multifamily market saw a big jump in 2016, with dollar volume up by 42 percent year-over-year to $2.8 billion.