Office-To-Apts Building Sold For $8M

A development duo sold an eight-story downtown office building for $8 million, three months after winning city permission to convert it into 92 apartments.

Meanwhile, Mandy Management obtained control over another 22 properties, worth $2.3 million, and flippers kept flipping, among the city’s latest property transactions.

The newly sold eight-story building is located at 129 Church St.

According to the city land records database, a holding company controlled by MOD Equities’ Jacob and Josef Feldman sold the property to View on the Green LLC for $8 million earlier this month.

The Feldman brothers’ local real estate company previously purchased that historic downtown building — which was built around 1912 and was once home to the Second New Haven National Bank — in 2014 for $6.9 million. The city last appraised the property as worth $7,050,200.

The new owner of 129 Church St. is a locally based holding company controlled by Shmuel Levitin and Isaac Shaer.

The Secretary of the State’s business registry lists their company as having a business address of 111 Howe St. It lists Levitin as having a home address in Hoboken, N.J., and Shaer as having a home address in Kings Point, N.Y.

City land records also show that, on Oct. 20, Levitin’s and Shaer’s company pulled a $3 million mortgage for 129 Church St. from Magma LP, a Delaware-registered holding company with a mailing address in Petach Tikva, Israel.

Neither Levitin nor Shaer could be reached for comment for this story.

The downtown office building sale comes roughly three months after the Feldman brothers’ company won site plan approval from the City Plan Commission in June to convert 129 Church St. into 92 new market-rate apartments.

“We are excited for the future of the building and feel that Isaac and Joseph have great past experience in construction and are set up to execute a fantastic project for both them and the city of New Haven,” Josef Feldman told the Independent via email on Friday.

Asked about why they decided to sell, Feldman said that he and Jacob ​“have tremendous gratitude to have had a great run the past 5 plus years running 129 Church St. as an affordable office option for the city.”

He said that their sale of the Church Street property has ​“zero effect” on their commitment to continuing to invest and manage properties in New haven. ​“We are proud to have 10 plus years of great work that we have performed and completed and only wish to continue our great relationship with the neighborhood in our future endeavors,” he said.

MOD has also won approvals in recent years for a number of other residential conversions around the city, including at the former Church of the Redeemer in East Rock, at the former Harold’s bridal shop on Elm Street, and at the James English Building on Court Street.

Asked for status updates on those three projects, Feldman said his company is ​“super excited about the construction progress we have made” at the former Church of the Redeemer and at 105 Court St. ​“We are hopeful to be ready to lease for Spring 2022,” he wrote.

As for MOD’s planned conversion of former Harold’s bridal shop at 19 Elm St. into 96 new apartments, Feldman wrote, ​“We are excited about that project as well as we are still in the pre-construction phase and are hopeful the project gets started in the near future.”

Roundup: Mandy Grows By $2.3M; Flippers Keep Flipping

In other recent local property transactions:

• Affiliates of the local megalandlord Mandy Management spent a total of $2,362,100 buying eight different residential properties containing 22 different apartments. Those Mandy purchases included the six-unit apartment building at 162 Bassett St., the three-family house at 303 Fountain St., the three-family house at 94 Hobart St., the three-family house at 74 Hubinger St., the single-family house at 75 Stimson Rd., the two-family house at 497 Winthrop Ave., the two-family house at 102 Thompson St., and the two-family house at 220 Pine St.

• A holding company controlled by Shneor Edelkopf and Ariel Mangami pocketed a quick $22,000 by buying the single-family house at 254 Ferry St. for $114,000 on Oct. 1, and then flipping it to New York-based landlord Abraham Taichman on Oct. 4 for $136,000. The Fair Haven flip marked the third in two months that Edelkopf, Mangami, and Taichman have been involved in. Click here and here for full stories about those other two recent flips.

• On Oct. 15, Alexander Kleiner bought the single-family mansion at 38 Lincoln St. for $2.2 million. The property last sold for $270,000 in 1995. The city last appraised it as worth $1,119,700.

See below for a full roundup of other recent local property sales.