In the world of mid-market New York City investment sales last week, the former owner of Murray’s Cheese picked up a Williamsburg building and Churchill Real Estate Holdings bought three rental buildings in Hell’s Kitchen.
1.) Gary Podell’s Churchill Real Estate Holdings picked up three contiguous rental buildings along West 48th Street in Hell’s Kitchen for $15.5 million. Churchill paid $12.4 million for two 12-unit buildings at 439 and 441 West 48th Street and $3.1 million for a 10-unit building at 443 West 48th Street. Churchill secured a $7.2 million mortgage for the three properties. All 34 apartments are market-rate and most recently, a two-bedroom apartment rented for $4,000 according to StreetEasy. The seller was Yaron Finkelstein.
2.) The former owner of Murray’s Cheese bought a five-story, mixed-use building in Williamsburg for $16.9 million. Rob Kaufelt bought the building at 130 Grand Street, at the corner of Berry Street, from Cheskel Strulovitch, a Brooklyn landlord with at least 40 buildings in his portfolio. The 37,500-square-foot building, with a alternate address at 255 Berry Street, includes 14 rent-stabilized units and two commercial units. Kaufelt owned Murray’s Cheese, a Bleecker Street stalwart that was founded in 1940, until April of this year when it sold to the Kroger grocery chain. Daniel Rahmani and Lukas Rociunas-Englert of Capital Property Partners represented both the buyer and the seller.
3.) TJS Industries sold a four-story storage facility at 114 Forrest Street in East Williamsburg to Bushwick 2 Lofts LLC. The buyer paid $10.3 million for the 30,340-square-foot building. TJS Industries was incorporated by Morris Schwartz in 1974 and bought the building in the same year under the name the Schwartz Brothers Realty Corp.
4.) Joseph Francolino, Sr. sold a 3,800-square-foot commercial building in Chelsea to an unknown buyer for $20 million. The one-story building at 459 West 19th Street is located between Ninth and 10th avenues. In the 1990s, Francolino pleaded guilty to leading the Mafia cartel that controlled New York City’s private trash industry.
Source: ACRIS data for closed sales between Jul. 3-9 and Reonomy data