Elysee Investment signs $90.4M refi with Morgan Stanley for 468 units in Washington Heights

Avi Dishi’s Elysee Investment through the entity 1387 St. Nicholas Realty LLC as borrower signed a refi loan with lender Morgan Stanley through the entity Morgan Stanley Private Bank valued at $90.4 million for 12 properties including the 86-unit residential elevator building at 90 Laurel Hill Terrace, 49-unit residential elevator building at 1447 St Nicholas Avenue, and the 61-unit residential elevator building at 475 West 186th Street, all in Washington Heights, Manhattan.
The deal closed on March 4, 2022 and was recorded on March 31, 2022. The prior lenders included Flushing Bank and Capital One.

The 12 properties have 468 units within 473,170 square feet of built space and 37,440 square feet of additional air rights according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The loan price per built square foot is $191 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 Elysee Investment Corp was Avraham Dishi. The signatory for Morgan Stanley was Michael Rausch. The financing includes $14.8 million of new debt. Michael Rausch is with Morgan Stanley.

Because multiple properties have been transacted, some of the following sections will follow the property with the largest assessed value, which in this case, is the property on 1447 St Nicholas Avenue.

Prior sales and revenue

The owners according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development includes Avraham Dishi, head officer and Ron Nahum, agent. The business entities are 600 West 183rd Street Realty Corp and 600 West 183rd Street Realty Corp. Out of the 12 properties, 11 with a total of 473,170 square feet of built space generated revenue of $8.7 million per year.

The property

The 1447 St Nicholas Avenue parcel has frontage of 104 feet and is 150 feet deep with a total lot size of 15,616 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 $5.9 million.

Violations and lawsuits

The properties were not involved in any lawsuits or bankruptcies in the past years. In addition, according to city public data, the properties have received 12 DOB violations, $83,125 in ECB penalties, 49 housing violations, and $88,590 in OATH penalties 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 Washington Heights, the bulk, or 49 percent of the 78 million square feet of commercial built space are residential elevator buildings, with residential walkup buildings next occupying 23 percent of the space. In sales, Washington Heights has 1.3 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $366.7 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 24th highest in Manhattan. For development, Washington Heights has near average amount of major developments among other neighborhoods and is the 19th highest in Manhattan. It had 1 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 1 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On the tax block of 1447 St Nicholas Avenue, PincusCo has identified the owners of nine of the 23 commercial properties representing 364,690 square feet of the 596,424 square feet. The largest owner is Merchants’ National Properties, followed by Elysee Investment and then Sol Goldman Investments. There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 34 percent of the 567,862 square feet of built space are residential walkup buildings, with residential elevator buildings next occupying 30 percent of the space.

The borrower

The PincusCo database, which is incomplete, currently indicates that Elysee Investment owned at least 14 commercial properties with 483,262 square feet and a city-determined market value of $61.2 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $34 million in debt, borrowed from Bank of America. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 72 percent of the 483,262 square feet of built space are residential elevator properties, with residential walkup properties next occupying 28 percent of the space. They are all located in Manhattan.

Surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 1447 St Nicholas Avenue, 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 $29.5 million. The most recent of the four was Republic Investment Company which borrowed $10.3 million from New York Community Bank secured by the 72,822-square-foot, 72-unit rental (D7) on 201 Wadsworth Avenue on March 8, 2022.

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