Buyer brief: Who buys C1 multifamily buildings

By Adam Pincus

The C1 is one of the most active asset classes that PincusCo Media tracked over the past two years, with more than 188 single-building transactions in New York City totaling more than $1 billion. The C1 is a multifamily walk-up building with six or more residential units but no stores.

PincusCo has tracked more than 5,000 commercial sale transactions with buyer and seller since mid-2019, but for this analysis focused on sale transactions with only one property. Within that subset of 2,200 transactions, the C1 was the most active by number of buildings sold with 188 and with at least 124 separate buyers. PincusCo relied on its database and did not reach out to confirm the figures with the firms.

Nearly half the 188 sales were in Brooklyn, with 91. There were 46 in Manhattan, 28 in the Bronx and 23 in Queens.

The most active buyer was Greenbrook Partners, with 22 acquisitions totaling $115 million, according to the PincusCo analysis. All its purchases were in Brooklyn, with nearly all in Park Slope and Bushwick. Greenbrook was in a league of its own in terms of buying this asset class. Greenbrook tends to acquire walk-ups without stores. For example Greenbrook only acquired four buildings of the second most popular asset class, C7, in single-property transactions. C7s are multifamily walk-ups of six units and up with stores, according to the PincusCo analysis.

The next most active buyers of C1s were Neighborhood Restore Housing and Chestnut Holdings of New York, each with six. They were followed by Prana Investments with five, and Christos Spyropoulos, Ilias Theodoropoulos and Adam Semler, each with four.

The buyer pool was deep, and most buyers only acquired one property.

Other buyers included Albert Srour, Meridian Properties, Aulder Capital, Metron Development, Klosed Properties and Icon Realty Management.