By Gus Saltonstall
An Upper West Side residential building was purchased recently by a real estate developer for $66 million, as first reported by Crain’s New York.
The 15-story rental building is located at 250 West 85th Street, on the corner of Broadway, and has 125 units. The property, which has alternative addresses of 2339 Broadway and 2333 Broadway, also has two ground-floor commercial tenants — fast, casual restaurants Panera Bread and NAYA.
The new owner of the Upper West Side building is Benchmark Real Estate Group, which bought the property from Heller Realty.
Benchmark Real Estate Group bills itself as “specializing in the acquisition, development, rehabilitation, and management of residential and commercial real estate…achieving above market returns on 30+ exited transactions,” according to its website.
The investment firm owns dozens of buildings across New York City, including one other on the Upper West Side at 166 West 75th Street, off the corner of Broadway.
In terms of 250 West 85th Street, it is a bustling Upper West Side prewar residential building. The apartments range from studios to four bedrooms, but the majority of units are one bedrooms that rent for between $3,500 and $4,600 a month, according to listing information from StreetEasy.
Crain’s reported that filings with the state show that there are rent controlled or stabilized apartments within the address as well.
The address is also noteworthy as the longtime home of the grocery store Broadway Farms until 2001, before turning into an outpost for Victoria’s Secret, which shuttered in 2021 and sat empty for a few years until the recent openings of Panera Bread and NAYA.
You can read more about the recent deal — HERE.
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To the people who complain that new buildings aren’t affordable – the old ones aren’t either!
Manhattan is expensive ,all apartments should be market rate and let the free market dictate the price.
Tell us your within the top 10% of income earners without telling us your in the top 10%.
The brazen audicity of the privileged few to casually toss this into the comments with their favorite word: “should”.
Is this the new version of what was once the obnoxious battle cry of the UES?: “NOCD”, or “Not Our Class, Darling”? Would propose minimum income eblntry-levels, or public access to everyone’s “net worth”? Would “unearned income” be included as well? If you want to casually let everyone know that you’d prefer living among your own ilk and no one else, just say so. OR, perhaps develop at least reasonable facsimile of compassion, be grateful for your good fortune, and recognize that many New Yorkers, who just 15 years ago were financially secure, now are facing the possibility of homelessness, a total loss of access healthcare, and even hunger. Or is that beneath your high standards?
Well said, Gary Hancock. These “free market fundamentalists” are so damn smug. Their wy is better for landlords but not for the vast majority.
Rent control limits how much landlords can charge, so they don’t make enough money to keep up or build new places. That means fewer good rentals are available. More people want to rent the fewer units that exist, so prices go up where there are no controls. Plus, tenants stay in rent-controlled apartments longer, so fewer units open up. The result is less housing overall, worse conditions, and higher prices outside controlled units—making the housing crisis worse, not better.
Rich people should be prohibited from buying or renting apartments they only use a few weeks out of the year and foreign criminals should be prevented from hiding their money in NYC real estate. Watch how fast the market fills up with available apartments when you do those two things.
You don’t really support freedom do you?
It has nothing to do with freedom. The apartments are bought by shill corporations for many reasons, including to hide money and for money laundering. That’s not making America free. That’s letting foreign entities buy up the nation. But, of course, if you enjoy having the nation owned by Communist China, I hope you like, at least the food.
Prohibited by whom? The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the United States? Apart from regulating how often I use my property, what else do you want to regulate? How I fold toilet paper?
NYC Dept of Finance site clarifies more about the number of rent stabilized apartments. There are 38 rent stabilized apartments in the building. Property taxes are $1,538,876.35 annually.
The property has a $45 million mortgage from 2020 at 3.25%. Mortgage is $1,481,433.96 annually.
With that kind of debt load, I imagine they see the value in converting the majority of apartments to condos and taking a loss on the rent stabilized apartments (maybe offloading them to another speculative entity).
If you want to look it up:
2333 BROADWAY
Borough: MANHATTAN
Block: 1232 Lot: 55
A 125 unit building with only 38 rent stabilized units (and tax breaks that go along with that) has 87 market apartments and those are very profitable.
You outlined fixed costs of 3,000,000/year. Divide by 125 units and 12 months and your per unit fixed costs are $2,000/month for mortgage and taxes. The best gauge of actual costs of operation of an apartment unit are the monthly maintenance fees for a condo unit, since taxes are separate and there’s no mortgage on a condo.
In a basic prewar like this one (not a newer luxury building) these fees run about 1,000/studio and one bed, 1,500/2 bed, 2,200/3 bed. Rents higher than 3,000 for a studio/one bed, 3,500 for a 2 bed and 4,200 for a 3 bed will yield profits. In today’s market rents on 1 bedrooms routinely top 4,500 and on 2 & 3 bedrooms rents are at least double the break even.
Your numbers are probably not far off, but I think it’s less profitable to operate.
There’s effectively no tax break for rent stabilized apartments. Based on the public tax records the building seems to get a $600 TOTAL annual reduction in tax payments for all 38 apartments combined, which is laughably low. But also common.
Also non-tax and non-debt costs are significant, ex. water, heating fuel, staff, maintenance and repairs on a 100 year old building, amortizing facade costs, etc
Another “rule of thumb” way to project costs is to assume that taxes are 35% of non-debt opex. So opex is likely $3.9M plus $1.5 debt for $5.4M annual costs to run the building. Or $3,600 per month per apartment.
Whether tax bill is adjusted for the stabilized apartments or not the total comes to about 1,000/month per unit, and factors into my calculations.
“ Also non-tax and non-debt costs are significant, ex. water, heating fuel, staff, maintenance and repairs on a 100 year old building, amortizing facade costs, etc”
That’s true for the pre wars all over this neighborhood and the cost/month of condos that I gave includes these costs. If anything the condos have higher costs for labor and use better quality materials when doing repairs.
Watch as they do everything they can to force out the regulated tenants so they can rent or sell the units as luxury housing. Why else would they bother to buy the building?
This would be a good thing. Enough of the free riders.
Hopefully they suceed.
Increasing the supply helps all and is more progressive.
Au contraire, mon frere! There is currently a glut of luxury housing in NYC, particularly in Manhattan. Hundreds of empty apartments. But none are affordable by those who truly need housing. You err in your presumption.
A glut?? The most recent vacancy rate in Manhattan I see is <2% from earlier this year, and that includes apartments inbetween tenants or in the middle of remodeling. That's a historically low figure and indicative of a market that has been starved of supply.
OPOE, if you read all of his/her comments, does not “err”, they just don’t CARE.
Thanx for reading. and the compliment,
I tend to think of myself as a realist.
If someone truly needs housing, there are cheaper places than Manhattan.
Why is their a sense of entitlement that one should live in Manhattan if they cannot afford it ?
Regulated apartments just benefit the lucky few.
If say in a rental 30% are regulated, the costs need to be made up in the market rate apartments.
It’s impossible to deregulate an apartment since 2019 unless possibly turning the building into a co-op/condo and then waiting for the existing tenants to die and hope that they don’t have any heirs (because our laws allow children/nieces/nephews to inherit a rent stabilized lease, which is bonkers to me).
That is the only “saving grace” here. The problem is that we will never get ADDITIONAL housing that is affordable to those who truly need it.
Only in certain cases. The person inheriting the lease must have lived with the leaseholder as their primary residence for two years prior to the leaseholder dying or leaving the apartment.
In practice owners of rent stabilized apartments have to go through probate court to affirmatively prove there is no one with the chance of succession rights before they can convert a rent stabilized apartment to a co-op or condo. Courts will accept the flimsiest evidence as proof that someone was living there.
No worries the new upcoming communist administration will make everything more affordable
Pardon me, but you misspelled “Democratic Socialist.” Perhaps this will help: “A socialist is a proponent of socialism, a political and economic system where the means of production are socially owned, typically by the state or community, and managed for the benefit of all rather than private profit. Socialists believe this model leads to a more equitable society by providing public access to necessities like housing, healthcare, and food, and by reducing economic inequality.”
I fled a country with government run grocery stores. The shelves were always empty. The country would also shoot or jail anybody who tried to leave.
You forgot the last part….”While socialists can believe whatever their limited brains allow, empirical evidence from over 70 years of socialism and dozens of countries has shown that they’re just stupid.”
Pretty much all of Western Europe has been & is democratic socialist by that definition. And all w/o the American murder rates…
Please name 1 country with a diverse population who successfully implements socialism ?
You elaborated off-topic, but did not show a misspelling
Broadway firm is in a different building. It’s across the street.
It used to be at that corner, however. It moved to the current location about 22 years ago. Charavari was at that corner before Broadway Farms.