“For Sale” Signs Multiply As Ocean Keeps Selling

Ocean Management affiliates sold another nine local rental properties over the past month — while Mandy Management affiliates sold six buildings of their own and bought one anew — as ​“For Sale” signs continue to pop up on front lawns across Newhallville and Dixwell.

According to the city land records database, Ocean Management — a megalandlord-property management-real estate investment outfit that is run by Shmuel Aizenberg and that owns more than 1,000 mostly low-income apartment across New Haven — has continued apace with its yearlong effort to sell and sell and sell its local apartment buildings.

Earlier this month, the Independent reported that Ocean affiliates had sold 15 of its New Haven properties containing 59 different apartments between Jan. 1 and July 17. Those sales took place for a total of $7.83 million.

City land records show that Ocean has only accelerated its residential portfolio sell-off in recent weeks, by selling nine more apartment buildings containing 27 different rental units between July 27 and Aug. 22. Those properties sold for a combined sum of $4.68 million across nine different transactions, all as tenants unions have stepped up their protests of Ocean’s upkeep of its properties.

Those recently sold Ocean properties include:

• The two-family house at 56 Victory Dr., sold for $285,000 on July 27 to Raid Hussein of Newark, Delaware;

• The two-family house at 171 Cedar Hill Ave., sold for $320,000 on July 28 to a company controlled by Alfred Chow-Yen;

• The three-family house at 418 Shelton Ave., sold for $370,408 on July 28 to Deborah Cooke of New Haven;

• The single-family house at 324 Alden Ave., sold for $360,000 on July 28 to Binyamin Zupnick and Rachel Sanderlin of Philadelphia;

• The two-family house at 1516 Quinnipiac Ave., sold for $320,000 on Aug. 17 to Nelly Rojas of Queens; 

• The single-family house at 110 South End Rd., sold for $275,000 on Aug. 21 to Rosa Perez Garcia of New Haven;

• The two-family house at 100 Atwater St., sold for $275,000 on Aug. 22 to a company controlled by David Dvash of Deerfield Beach, Florida;

• The two-family house at 62 Miller St., sold for $275,000 on Aug. 22 to a company controlled by Shneor Edelkopf of New Haven.

• The 12-unit apartment building at 1263 Chapel St., sold for $2.2 million on Aug. 22 to a company controlled by Michael Feld of Woodmere, New York.

The Ocean sales likely won’t stop there, as the Independent has observed a raft of new ​“For Sale” signs in the Dixwell and Newhallville neighborhoods in particular.

On a recent bike ride up Dixwell Avenue and down Winchester Avenue and across a few side streets, the Independent observed 11 such signs posted in front of single‑, two‑, three‑, and four-family houses. 

Seven of those for-sale-signed properties are currently owned by affiliates of Ocean; one by an affiliate of local megalandlord Mandy Management; and three by individual owners, and not limited liability companies, or LLCs.

The for-sale-signed Ocean properties in Newhallville and Dixwell include the three-family house at 414 Dixwell, the four-family house at 440 Dixwell, the three-family house at 22 Bassett St., the three-family house at 585 Winchester Ave., the two-family house at 165 Starr St., the two-family house at 106 Thompson St., and the three-family house at 91 Henry St.

One of the real estate agents whose name, phone number, and picture appears on multiple of those Ocean property for-sale signs is Coldwell Banker Realty’s Lauren Freedman, who’s based out of Branford.

Asked about what condition these latest up-for-sale Ocean properties are in, especially given how many times Aizenberg has been fined in recent years for code violations at his company’s local rentals, Freedman said, ​“They need work, you can see from the photos.” She added that Aizenberg’s ​“selling a lot of them off for a bigger project.”

Asked if these properties are indeed finding willing buyers — which, based on city land record filings, they have been — Freedman said, ​“A lot are moving. Some might be overpriced.” But they are indeed selling. 

She noted just how many properties Ocean owns, and how many of these buildings are on the market for the first time in a long time. It can be hard to sell some of the properties currently occupied by tenants, as those tenants don’t always want prospective buyers inside to view the property, she said.

But, she concluded, ​“I have a bunch under contract.” And more with interested buyers lined up. ​“They’re moving.”

Aizenberg did not respond to a request for comment for the publication time of this article. He did speak to the Independent in March 2022 when his company put up for sale 101 multi-family homes containing 399 different apartments in New Haven as part of a $52 million package deal.

Aizenberg told the Independent at the time that his company was ​“focusing now more on new development, new apartment builds,” including the (still under construction) 129-unit market-rate apartment project at 500 Blake St. in Westville. 

“This package is comprised of 399 units, a mix of 2 – 10 unit properties (101 properties) and offers an investor looking to break into the hard to reach New Haven market immediate scale,” one such now-defunct online listing of the​“Ocean 399” portfolio read at the time.​“90% of the portfolio has been renovated in the past 5 years, and offers a significant upside in rents. New Haven’s rental market has increased 10 – 20% in the last year providing a new owner immediate ability to raise rents.”

Ocean isn’t the only local megalandlord to sell off New Haven rental properties as of late.

According to the city land records database, on July 31, affiliates of Mandy Management sold a total of seven properties containing 23 different apartments for a combined sum of $2.2 million to a company controlled by Yechiel Cohen of Spring Valley, New York. 

Those Mandy-sold properties include the two-family house at 569 Washington Ave.. the four-family house at 213 Ferry St., the three-family house at 227 Davenport Ave., the three-family house at 128 Carlisle St., the six-unit apartment house at 118 Shepard St., the two-family house at 56 White St., the three-family house at 125 Butler St.

Also on July 31, another affiliate of Mandy Management purchased the six-unit apartment house at 83 Sachem St. for $1 million from a company controlled by Drew Chernoff. 

Meanwhile, one of the properties that the Independent recently observed with a ​“For Sale” sign on its front lawn, the single-family house at 464 Dixwell Ave., belongs to an affiliate of Mandy.

“We continually assess our portfolio and, when conditions change — whether it’s rising interest rates, taxes, insurance or capital costs, we review each asset to ensure alignment with our long-term strategy of building value,” Mandy Management’s Yudi Gurevitch told the Independent in a comment for this article. ​“At any given time, we may buy or sell depending on a number of factors including risk mitigation.” 

Gurevitch continued: ​“It’s essential to note that the decision to sell a multi-family property during a period of rising interest rates is highly dependent on a property’s individual circumstances, as well as current market conditions. While rising interest rates and associated capital costs may be a motivating factor in some of these cases, we hold onto properties if the fundamentals are strong or if the property isn’t significantly impacted by these types of fluctuations.”

During a recent Board of Alders Finance Committee meeting about a city proposal to create a new land bank authority, city Economic Development Administrator Michael Piscitelli commented upon all of the properties up for sale around New Haven.

“As interest rates have gone up, we’ve been seeing a few more ​‘For Sale’ signs,” he told the alders at that mid-August meeting. ​“We are not as a city always well prepared to be speedy and fast to the marketplace” to buy those properties or otherwise make sure they end up in the hands of those who will steward them properly. Thus the pitch to create the nonprofit, quasipublic land bank.

In a followup comment sent by email for this article, Piscitelli said, ​“We have resources to support first-time homebuyers and of course the Land Bank is another tool which will support neighborhood stability.”

Newhallville resident Lance Thomas had another theory as to why so many for-sale signs have been popping up in his neighborhood as of late.

“There’s too much gun violence,” he said, with a cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in another as he paused before an Ocean-up-for-sale property on Winchester to talk with this reporter. ​“I don’t like where I’m at now,” and he knows plenty of others in the neighborhood who feel the same way.