Jason Hart

Hart has created a lane for his company’s deep pockets.

While other private equity firms focus on Manhattan office skyscrapers or massive rental complexes, Carlyle has quietly built up one of Brookyn’s biggest multifamily portfolios, one small building at a time. 

Hart, who heads the Washington, D.C.-based firm’s New York acquisitions, has bought at least 230 walkup buildings with a value of roughly $800 million. The company has targeted buildings with up to 10 units in neighborhoods like Bushwick, Bedford-Stuyvesant, Park Slope and Cobble Hill that have caps on their real estate tax increases.

They also tend to be mostly free-market, avoiding the severe restrictions imposed on owners by the 2019 rent stabilization law.

It’s a play others have tried before — rolling up these small properties and selling them as a larger portfolio — with mixed results. Carlyle’s exit strategy will be closely watched.

But Hart is working on bigger projects too.

In 2023, Carlyle teamed up with Hal Fetner’s Fetner Properties to develop a 363-unit rental building in Long Island City. In 2024, the firm partnered with Ofer Yardeni’s Stonehenge NYC to buy the Henley apartment building at 165 East 66th Street for $128 million acquisition. 

— Rich Bockmann