Phipps Houses, Douglaston pay $16.1M for dev site in Mott Haven

UPDATED 8:46 a.m., March 29, 2022: A joint venture of Phipps Houses and Douglaston Development through the entity East 138th Street JV Associates LLC paid $16.1 million to Wayne Finkelstein through the entity Rydan Realty, Inc. for the development site currently occupied by an industrial building at 110 East 138th Street in Mott Haven, Bronx.
The deal closed on March 17, 2022 and was recorded on March 28, 2022. The property has 30,284 square feet of built space and 101,611 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 131,903 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $532 and the price per buildable square foot is $122 per the PincusCo analysis. (The price per square foot analysis is the transaction price divided by square feet as reported in public records and assumes no air rights have been sold.)
The signatory for Wayne Finkelstein was Wayne Finkelstein. The signatory for Phipps Houses was Michael Wadman.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has records that the buyer Phipps Houses purchased six properties in three transactions for a total of $17.2 million and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.

The property

The 110 East 138th Street parcel has frontage of 134 feet and is 285 feet deep with a total lot size of 38,344 square feet. The zoning is R7-2 which allows for up to 3.44 times floor area ratio (FAR) for residential. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $1.3 million.

Violations and lawsuits

The property was not involved in any lawsuits or bankruptcies in the past years. In addition, according to city public data, the property has not received any significant violations in the last year.

Development

There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $5 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Mott Haven, the bulk, or 38 percent of the 43.4 million square feet of commercial built space are residential elevator buildings, with industrial buildings next occupying 23 percent of the space. In sales, Mott Haven has 2.7 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $744 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the highest in Bronx. For development, Mott Haven is the 7th most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 4.3 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 10 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of six of the eight commercial properties representing 17,600 square feet of the 54,384 square feet. The two identified owners are Metropolitan Transportation Authority and City of New York. There is one active new building construction project totaling 102,866 square feet. It is a 85-unit, 102,866-square-foot R-2 building developed by Jacob Sofer with plans filed November 16, 2021 and it has not been permitted yet.

the majority, or 88 percent of the 54,384 square feet of built space are industrial buildings, with office buildings next occupying 12 percent of the space.

The buyer

The PincusCo database, which is not complete, currently tracks 38 commercial Phipps Houses properties with 1,843,835 square feet and a city-determined market value of $204.7 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $1 billion in debt, with top three lenders as NYC Housing Development Corporation, Citibank, and City of New York respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 95 percent of the 1,843,835 square feet of built space are residential elevator properties, with industrial properties next occupying 4 percent of the space. The bulk, or 66 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Bronx next at 32 percent of the space.

Surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 110 East 138th Street, PincusCo identified two commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months.
Of those two items, two were sales above $5 million totaling $42.6 million. The most recent of the two was CubeSmart which bought the 122,354-square-foot, one-unit industrial (E7) on 255 Exterior Street for $9.5 million from ABS Partners Real Estate on July 31, 2020.

UPDATED with addition of Douglaston Development as joint venture partner with Phipps. 

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