Rybak Development pays school $20.9M for dev site in Forest Hills

Rybak Development through the entity 78-29 Austin Street Holding LLC paid $20.9 million to the Kew-Forest School for the development site at 78-29 Austin Street stretching along 78th Avenue, in Forest Hills, Queens.
The deal closed on June 29, 2022 and was recorded on July 15, 2022.The property has 34,920 square feet of built space and 111,000 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 145,800 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $599 and the price per buildable square foot is $143 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 Kew-Forest School was Christopher D’Amato. The signatory for Rybak Development was Sergey Rybak. Sergey Rybak is the founder of Rybak Development.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has records that the buyer Rybak Development purchased four properties in three transactions for a total of $54 million and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Kew-Forest School had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

The property

The 78th Avenue parcel has frontage of 332 feet and is 181 feet deep with a total lot size of 60,000 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is R6 which allows for up to 2.43 times floor area ratio (FAR) for residential. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $8.6 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 and $655 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 Forest Hills, the majority, or 62 percent of the 15 million square feet of commercial built space are elevator buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 12 percent of the space. In sales, Forest Hills has had very little sales volume relative to other neighborhoods with $88.8 million in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Forest Hills has 1.2 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 8th highest in Queens. It had 1.2 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 8 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The buyer

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Rybak Development owned at least six commercial properties in New York City with 209,771 square feet and a city-determined market value of $18.6 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $121.7 million in debt, with top three lenders as MF1 Capital, Valley National Bank, and Bank Leumi respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 49 percent of the 209,771 square feet of built space are rental condo properties, with elevator properties next occupying 25 percent of the space. The bulk, or 89 percent of the built space, is in Brooklyn, with Manhattan next at 11 percent of the space.

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