The Multi-family Super Sale

Cushman & Wakefield are now marketing "The Brooklyn Legacy Portfolio," which it bills as "the second largest portfolio of multifamily buildings ever offered in New York City and the largest the outer boroughs have ever seen." The portfolio consists of 57 multi-family buildings, spread across Brooklyn and Queens.  Most of the buildings are situated in Crown Heights, Bed-Stuy, and Bushwick, and closer to home there are properties in Park Slope and Sunset Park.  I recognized one of the buildings from the listing set-up: 219 13th street, just off Fourth Avenue.  I wrote about this building last fall; its owner, Silvershore Properties, had put it on the market shortly after buying it in 2013, and it was back on the market again in 2016.

... a look at the DOB open violations for 219 13th shows a sorry picture, with Failure to Maintain, material false statements as to rent controlled/stabilized units in the building, & unsafe wiring. 

All open violations were issued after Silvershore bought the property.  This is not the first indication of dubious practices by these owners.  In 2014 Bushwick longtime tenants of a Silvershore building faced eviction from their apartments, despite alleged assurances from the previous landlord that they would be able to stay.   Earlier this year Silvershore was accused of "predatory" behavior by purposely neglecting a property in Ridgewood to displace Section 8 tenants.

The Brooklyn Legacy set-up states that 27% of the portfolio units included in the sale are rent-regulated, and "have not been renovated to cater to the prevailing demand of the surrounding market."  

In 2014, Silvershore principal David Shorenstein described the company's recent buy-up activity:

“We discovered some lower-cost buildings in Brooklyn,” principal David Shorenstein said, observing that there are “so many different neighborhoods that haven’t yet been established,” at least from the perspective of the real-estate investor.
His company, Shorenstein said, invests to improve buildings with amenities like granite countertops, Shaker cabinets, and quasi-spa showers: “You have to spend a lot of money to get those quality tenants.”
Those tenants are often newcomers with parental guarantors. Some 85 percent of those renting 200 apartments from his company in the last eight months showed out-of-state drivers’ licenses, he said."