Real estate exec sells $9M Midwood home

Deal among several high-priced transactions in quiet area

Buyers sue Chicagoland brokers, Chase Real Estate in alleged investment fraud
Maguire Capital Group's Marvin Azrak with 935 East Ninth Street (Google Maps, Maguire Capital Group)

A small neighborhood in Midwood has scored another big sale. 

Joseph A. Sutton spent $9.5 million on a single-family home at 935 East Ninth Street. The sale is the largest in the area this year, according to StreetEasy. The buyer is not the same Joseph Sutton who works at Wharton Properties, contrary to initial published reports.

The 4,100-square-foot house was sold by Marvin and Barbara Azrak, who purchased it in 2015 for $2.1 million and comprehensively renovated it. Azrak is the managing principal of real estate investment firm Maguire Capital Group, which he founded in 2013.

The sale is one in a growing number in the area to register prices that are more typical of renovated row houses on the brownstone-lined streets of Park Slope or Brooklyn Heights.

Last month, a 4,000-square-foot home on the same East Ninth Street block sold for $7 million. Property records show that the home had not traded hands since 1985, when it fetched just $450,000.

Both homes appeared to be off-market deals, which is not atypical for an area that is host to a significant Syrian Jewish population. Many of the sales, which are routinely in the $4 million or $5 million range, occur between community members without a listing appearing on StreetEasy or anywhere else.

The largest deals in the area seem to center around a handful of real estate families.

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In 2022, Jeff Sutton, the founder of Wharton, set the benchmark for sales in the area when he purchased 2088 East Third Street in nearby Gravesend for $14 million. The sellers were yet another real estate dynasty, the Cheras, whose firm is Crown Acquisitions.

Two years ago, a trust tied to Marvin Azrak sold a single-family home at 2003 East Third Street for $11 million to an undisclosed buyer.

And last year the Sitt family moved two homes for $12 million apiece.

In July, Marilyn Sitt, owner of real estate investment firm Sitt Asset Management, sold a property at 509 Avenue S for $12 million. Five months later her son David, an executive with the real estate investment firm Status Capital, sold a home less than three blocks away for $12.2 million.

The limited number of homes available within walking distance of certain synagogues important in the Syrian Jewish community has helped drive prices up, as have substantial renovations of formerly humble houses.

Correction: The buyer of 935 East Ninth Street was an LLC associated with Joseph A. Sutton. An earlier version of this story misidentified the buyer as a Wharton Properties executive of the same first and last name.

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