Camber Property Group pays $11.6M to Steven Vegh, Mordechai Kosolowitz for dev site in Far Rockaway

Camber Property Group paid $11.6 million to Steven Vegh and Mordechai Kosolowitz for a development site in Far Rockaway, Queens, in three separate transactions.

In the first transaction, Camber Property Group through the entity Bcd Housing Development Fund Corporation paid $4.1 million to Steven Vegh and Mordechai Kosolowitz through the entity 1324 Bcd LLC for midblock industrial building at 1324 Beach Channel Drive in Far Rockaway, Queens.
The deal closed on April 25, 2022 and was recorded on May 11, 2022. The property has 3,600 square feet of built space and 24,380 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 27,945 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $1,147 and the price per buildable square foot is $147 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 seller bought the property on October 22, 2018, for $1.4 million. The signatory for Steven Vegh and Mordechai Kosolowitz was Steven Vegh and Mordechai Kosolowitz. The signatory for Camber Property Group was Rick Gropper.

In the second transaction, Camber Property Group through the entity Bcd Housing Development Fund Corporation paid $3.9 million to Steven Vegh and Mordechai Kosolowitz through the entity 1312 Bcd LLC for midblock retail building at 1312 Beach Channel Drive in Far Rockaway, Queens.
The deal closed on April 25, 2022 and was recorded on May 11, 2022.The property has 1,400 square feet of built space and 24,150 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 25,515 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $2,818 and the price per buildable square foot is $154 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 seller bought the property on November 29, 2018, for $1.2 million. The signatory for Steven Vegh and Mordechai Kosolowitz was Steven Vegh and Mordechai Kosolowitz. The signatory for Camber Property Group was Rick Gropper.

In the third transaction, Camber Property Group through the entity Bcd Housing Development Fund Corporation paid $3.6 million to Steven Vegh and Mordechai Kosolowitz through the entity Dg Properties 1 LLC for midblock eight-unit mixed-use building at 1316 Beach Channel Drive in Far Rockaway, Queens.
The deal closed on April 25, 2022 and was recorded on May 11, 2022. The property has 5,341 square feet of built space and 21,635 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 26,960 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $665 and the price per buildable square foot is $131 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 seller bought the property on March 15, 2018, for $1.4 million. The signatory for Steven Vegh and Mordechai Kosolowitz was Steven Vegh and Mordechai Kosolowitz. The signatory for Camber Property Group was Rick Gropper.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, Pincusco has records that the buyer Camber Property Group purchased 29 properties in 17 transactions for a total of $388.6 million and sold five properties in three transactions for a total of $77 million over the past 24 months.
The seller Steven Vegh had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

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 Far Rockaway, the bulk, or 39 percent of the 21.1 million square feet of commercial built space are 1-4 family buildings, with residential elevator buildings next occupying 38 percent of the space. In sales, Far Rockaway has the 30th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in Queens with $33.3 million in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Far Rockaway is the 5th most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 5.9 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 28 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

There is one active new building construction project totaling 131,906 square feet. It is a 147-unit, 131,906-square-foot R-2 building developed by Jacob Gross with plans filed July 23, 2021 and it has not been permitted yet.

The majority, or 46 percent of the 54,038 square feet of built space are 1-4 family buildings, with retail buildings next occupying 24 percent of the space.

The buyer

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Camber Property Group owned at least 42 commercial properties with 3,021,164 square feet and a city-determined market value of $236.3 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $632.6 million in debt, with top three lenders as Merchants Bank of Indiana, NYC Housing Development Corporation, and Greystone & Co. respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 93 percent of the 3,021,164 square feet of built space are residential elevator properties, with residential walkup properties next occupying 5 percent of the space. The bulk, or 66 percent of the built space, is in Bronx, with Brooklyn next at 26 percent of the space.

Surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 1324 Beach Channel Drive, PincusCo identified three commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months.
Of those three items, one was in new building development. It was a new building permit application filed on July 23, 2021 for a 109,233-square-foot R-2 building with 147 residential units at 13-12 Beach Channel Drive.
Of those three items, two were loans above $5 million totaling $249.2 million. The most recent of the two was Phipps Houses which borrowed $87.5 million from NYC Housing Development Corporation secured by the 13,071-square-foot, 56-unit rental (D6) on MOTT Avenue and three other properties on February 1, 2022.

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