Jackpot: Liberty Building Sells For $29M

The 124-unit Liberty apartment building on Temple Street has sold for $29.1 million — becoming the latest large downtown residential complex to change hands for millions of dollars above its city-appraised value.

That’s according to the city’s online land records database. See below for a full roundup of recent local property sales.

On June 15, four related holding companies — Cue Liberty LP, Cue Liberty TIC 2 LLC, Cue Liberty TIC 3 LLC, and Cue Liberty TIC 4 LLC — purchased the seven-story, 124-unit apartment building at 148 – 152 Temple St. for $29,150,000 from the holding company Ansonia Liberty LLC.

The property last sold for $7.7 million in 2001, and the city most recently appraised the property as worth $18,035,900.

That means that the Temple Street apartment building sold for 61 percent more than its post-revaluation city-appraised value, which determines how much the property owner owes in local taxes. 

Its meteoric sale price echoes the recent sale of the nearby 198-unit Taft apartment tower on College Street for $52.5 million, or double its city-appraised value. 

Click here, here, here and here for other recent examples of large local residential or commercial complexes selling for well above their respective city-appraised values.

The new owners of the Liberty apartment building are affiliated with a Lakewood, N.J.-based real estate company called Cue Residential. A $22 million mortgage loan that the Cue Residential companies received on June 10 from the New York Community Bank for this Temple Street property was signed by an investor named David Klein, according to the city land records database.

The seller of the property, meanwhile, is affiliated with the New York City-based real estate company Beachwold Residential. The warranty deed for this Temple Street property transaction was signed by an investor named Gideon Friedman, whose LinkedIn page identifies him as the managing member at Beachwold Residential.

Representatives from Cue Residential and Beachwold Residential did not respond to requests for comment by the publication time of this article.

According to a National Register of Historic Places Inventory Nomination Form for the Chapel Street Commercial Historic District from 1983, the Liberty Building — formerly known as the YMCA Building — was constructed in 1903 in the Beaux Arts style, part of a general architectural trend from the era that included the remodeling of the Union League Club at 1032 Chapel St.

According to a recent New Haven Biz article about the sale of the Liberty building and other nearby apartment buildings, the transaction was handled by a company called Institutional Property Advisors (IPA), which was also involved in the recent sale of the Taft apartment building. The Liberty building, which used to hold offices (including at one point the one-desk New Haven bureau of the Hartford Courant) and a barber shop in the basement, was converted into apartments in 1999. The federal government successfully prosecuted the developer who oversaw the conversion, Melvin Weintraub, after his work crew dumped asbestos in the West River.

Real Estate Roundup: Mandy Picks Up Another 26 Apts For $2.3M

In other recent local property transactions: 

• Affiliates of the local megalandlord Mandy Management spent another $2.3 million buying six different properties containing 26 different apartments in the Annex, Fair Haven, Cedar Hill, and Fair Haven Heights. Those include the 11-unit apartment building at 61 Warwick St., the four-family house at 294 Quinnipiac Ave., the three-family house at 169 Clay St., the three-family house at 118 Cedar Hill Ave., the two-family house at 539 Quinnipiac Ave., and the three-family house at 300 Quinnipiac Ave.

Meanwhile, a June 29 rating-agency analysis of a commercial mortgage backed security put out by one of Mandy’s key investors offers yet another detailed look into how Mandy’s local real estate empire operates. That report analyzes the 47 local properties containing 184 different Mandy-controlled apartments covered by a $15.6 million mortgage loan that a Mandy affiliate received from Corevest American Finance in February. According to the report, those 184 apartments are 90.2 percent occupied, have an average monthly rent of $1,101, an average size of 941 square feet, and an approximate building age of 100 years old. (Click here and go to PDF Page 39 to read the Mandy-specific section of the pre-sale report. And click here and here to read previous articles about Corevest’s financial support of Mandy, and about what exactly these financial-industry reports are and what they reveal about Mandy’s local business.)

• On June 6, Amit and Shikha Khandelwl purchased the single-family house at 50 Huntington St. in Prospect Hill from Constance Lapalombara for $1,110,000. The property last sold for $376,000 in 1987, and the city last appraised it as worth $907,800.

• On June 7, a holding company controlled by Levi Stone purchased the five-unit apartment building at 548 Chapel St. in Wooster Square for $950,000 from a holding company controlled by Frank D’Ostilio, Jr. The property last sold for $575,000 in 2010, and the city last appraised it as worth $857,500.

• On June 16, a holding company controlled by Darrell Hardy purchased the four-family house at 68 Rock St. in Cedar Hill for $375,000 from Tracey Blanford and Rodney Palmer. The city last appraised the property as worth $374,000.

See below for a full list of recent local property sales.