Jeff Zheng pays $2.7M to Hiuian Cheng for dev site in Long Island City

Jeff Zheng through the entity 27 Hunter LLC paid $2.7 million to Hiuian Cheng through the entity 42-76 Hunter Street LLC for the development site (V1) at 42-76 Hunter Street in Long Island City, Queens. Hiuian Cheng is also known by the name Ian Cheng.
The deal closed on October 18, 2023 and was recorded on October 24, 2023. The property has zero square feet of built space and 5,600 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 5,600 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per buildable square foot is $482 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 24, 2021, for $1.4 million. The signatory for Hiuian Cheng was Hiuian Cheng. The signatory for Jeff Zheng was Jeff Zheng. The contract date was July 18, 2023.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Jeff Zheng had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Hiuian Cheng purchased one property in one transaction for a total of $4.5 million and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

The property

The parcel has frontage of 25 feet and is 44 feet deep with a total lot size of 1,120 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is M1-5/R7-3 which allows for up to 5 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $230,000.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months. In addition, according to city public data, the property has not received any significant violations in the last year.

Development

There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $1 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Long Island City, The bulk, or 32 percent of the 60.1 million square feet of commercial built space are industrial buildings, with elevator buildings next occupying 31 percent of the space. In sales, Long Island City has the 9th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $1.9 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Long Island City is the 4th most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 8.6 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 14 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of four of the 11 commercial properties representing zero square feet of the 18,370 square feet. The largest owner is ZL Capital, followed by Xi Zhao and then Steven Li.
On the tax block, there were two new building construction projects totaling 61,747 square feet. The largest is a 51-unit, 39,442 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by ZL Capital and filed by Yu Liu with plans filed September 4, 2020 and permitted September 7, 2021. The second largest is a 27-unit, 22,305 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by Xi Zhao with plans filed December 3, 2020 and permitted March 22, 2022.

The majority, or 62 percent of the 18,370 square feet of built space are office buildings, with walkup buildings next occupying 17 percent of the space.

The seller

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Hiuian Cheng owned at least three commercial properties with seven residential units in New York City with 21,955 square feet and a city-determined market value of $9.1 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) Within the portfolio, all identified are mixed-use properties. They are all located in Manhattan.

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