By Lauren Johnson
Manhattan landlord Maurice Laboz’ Regal Real Estate has sold close to $40 million worth of real estate in a series of deals with The Lam Group.
While better known for its work in hotel development, it is expected that Lam will maintain the properties scattered across Manhattan as apartments and convert others to luxury homes.
“These are core investment properties, they just have great rates of return so you can sit there rent and manage them,” said Christopher Okada, president and owner of Okada and Company LLC, who represented The Lam Group.
In the first transaction, Regal sold the 30-unit, mixed-use building at 21-23 Maiden Lane in Lower Manhattan for $14.5 million. The buyer was listed in city records as YJL Holdings LLC, a subsidiary of The Lam Group based at 202 Centre Street.
The nine-story, 37,800 s/f building has a total of 30 apartment units, all rented at open market rents, and 4,300 s/f of ground floor retail occupied by food chains, Papa John’s and Subway. Laboz bought the property in May of 2000 and for $2 million, according to city records.
Broker Jasper Socia, president of Independent Properties NYC, Inc. who represented Laboz in the sale, said the new owner plans to keep the property as a rental. Average rents in the building, according to StreetEasy.com, are $2,748 per month.
“[The building] was fully renovated in 2001, so nothing needs to be done,” noted Socia.
Socia also represented Regal Realty in the sale of 105 Chambers Street in Tribeca, a commercial condominium also known as The Cary Building, for $22 million.
Lam plans to convert the office and retail spaces, totaling some 32,000 s/f, into condominium residential units, according to Okada.
Finally, Laboz also sold 3 East 17th Street, a two-story retail property in Flatiron district, for $4.4m. The Lam Group will reconfigure and renovate the 5,400 s/f building to create ground floor retail with a three-bedroom apartment above. Okada said the cap rate for the property made the investment “like finding a gem in the sewer.”
Socia, a former Bond NY broker who founded his own firm earlier this year, is currently marketing approximately 50,000 s/f of residential and commercial properties.
“I’m young and ambitious, looking to continue on my path of selling multi-family properties throughout Brooklyn and Manhattan,” he said.
Regal Real Estate had no comment on the transactions.
