Icon Realty sells 19-unit walkup in Greenwich Village for $16.2M

The anonymous entity 51 West 11th Street, L.P. paid $16.2 million to Icon Realty Management through the entity 51 West 11 Realty LLC for the midblock 19-unit residential walkup building at 51 West 11th Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan.
The deal closed on June 2, 2022 and was recorded on June 22, 2022. The property has 8,628 square feet of built space according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $1,883 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 September 15, 2016, for $8.5 million. The signatory for Icon Realty Management was Terrence Lowenberg. The signatory for 51 West 11th Street, L.P. was Guy Arad. Terrence Lowenberg is the principal of Icon Realty Management. The property is adjacent to 49 West 11th Street, which is owned by Solil Management.

Prior sales and revenue

The seller Icon Realty Management purchased one property in one transaction for a total of $8 million and sold five properties in five transactions for a total of $60.6 million over the same time period. The former owners according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development includes Terrence Lowenberg, head officer and Todd Cohen, officer. The business entity is 51 West 11 Realty, Llc.

The property

The 51 West 11th Street parcel has frontage of 23 feet and is 103 feet deep with a total lot size of 2,452 square feet. The zoning is R6 which allows for up to 2.43 times floor area ratio (FAR) for residential. The property is in the Greenwich Village Historic District. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $2.4 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 $125 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 Greenwich Village, the bulk, or 35 percent of the 34 million square feet of commercial built space are residential elevator buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 18 percent of the space. In sales, Greenwich Village has the 10th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $1.3 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Greenwich Village has had very little major development activity relative to other neighborhoods.It had 445,850 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 this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of six of the 22 commercial properties representing 99,466 square feet of the 379,766 square feet. The largest owner is Charles Alpert, followed by Robert Gitto and then Barbara Lidsky. There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 53 percent of the 908,476 square feet of built space are specialty buildings, with residential elevator buildings next occupying 19 percent of the space.

The seller

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Icon Realty Management owned at least 100 commercial properties with 1,113,852 square feet and a city-determined market value of $374.6 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $239.3 million in debt, with top three lenders as Signature Bank, New York Community Bank, and Bank Leumi respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 65 percent of the 1,113,852 square feet of built space are walkup properties, with elevator properties next occupying 14 percent of the space. The bulk, or 87 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Brooklyn next at 13 percent of the space.

Surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 51 West 11th Street, PincusCo identified seven commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months.
Of those seven items, one was for major renovation including a certificate of occupancy change. It was a permit application filed on December 23, 2020 for the $1.5 million renovation of 20,184-square-foot R-2 building with 52 residential units at 27 West 11th Street.
Of those seven items, four were sales above $5 million totaling $60.6 million. The most recent of the four was Amirian Group which bought the 4,791-square-foot, seven-unit mixed-use building (S5) on 36 West 11th Street for $11 million from Bartle Family on November 17, 2021.
Of those seven items, two were loans above $5 million totaling $16.9 million. The most recent of the two was Willowick Properties which borrowed $7 million from Signature Bank secured by the 13,278-square-foot, 23-unit rental (D7) on 57 West 10th Street on May 24, 2022.

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