Ded Gjonaj signs $12.9M refi loan with Peapack-Gladstone for residential elevator in Harlem

Ded Gjonaj through the entity West 151st Street Realty Co. LLC as borrower signed a refi loan with lender Peapack-Gladstone Bank valued at $12.9 million for the midblock 120-unit residential elevator building at 208 West 151st Street in Harlem, Manhattan.
The deal closed on April 7, 2022 and was recorded on June 3, 2022. The prior lender was Webster Bank which held debt that had an original loan amount of $9.2 million. The property has 63,378 square feet of built space according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The loan price per built square foot is $203 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 owner bought the property on April 30, 2013, for $1.8 million. The signatory for Ded Gjonaj was Ded Gjonaj. The signatory for Peapack-Gladstone Bank was Martin Brady.

Prior sales and revenue

The owners according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development includes Deda Gjonaj, head officer and Victor Gjonaj, site manager. The business entity is West 151 Street Realty Llc. The 63,378-square-foot property generated revenue of $1.3 million or $21 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

The property

The 208 West 151st Street parcel has frontage of 150 feet and is 99 feet deep with a total lot size of 14,988 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 $4.9 million.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property since September of 2020. In addition, according to city public data, the property has received one DOB violation, 102 housing violations, $1,600 in OATH penalties, and two housing litigations 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 Harlem, the bulk, or 42 percent of the 99.7 million square feet of commercial built space are residential elevator buildings, with residential walkup buildings next occupying 24 percent of the space. In sales, Harlem has 2.2 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $607.8 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 20th highest in Manhattan. For development, Harlem has 2.8 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 5th highest in Manhattan. It had 2.6 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 3 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There were two pre-foreclosure suit filed among other residential elevator buildings in the past 12 months.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of seven of the 16 commercial properties representing 220,219 square feet of the 408,483 square feet. The largest owner is Jung-Hsiang Hwang, followed by Vertical Bridge Real Estate, LLC and then Michael Callaghan. There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 47 percent of the 456,393 square feet of built space are residential walkup buildings, with residential elevator buildings next occupying 43 percent of the space.

Surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 208 West 151st Street, Pincusco identified four commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months.
Of those four items, four were loans above $5 million totaling $457.9 million. The most recent of the four was Jung-Hsiang Hwang which borrowed $39.6 million from First Commercial Bank secured by the 93,505-square-foot, 103-unit rental (D1) on 2600 7th Avenue on May 5, 2022.

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