Taft Apartments Sold For $52.5M

An Elmsford, N.Y.-based investor has purchased the historic 198-unit Taft apartment building downtown for $52.5 million — nearly double the amount at which the city just appraised it for tax purposes.

That’s one of the city’s latest property transactions, according to New Haven’s land records database. (See a full roundup of recent local sales below.)

On April 14, Par Taft LLC purchased the 13-story apartment building at 265 College St. from Taft Realty Associates LLC for $52.5 million.

The apartment tower last sold for $3.2 million in 1995. And the city last appraised it, after the most recent citywide revaluation, as worth $26,320,100.

The new owner of the 1912-built former hotel-turned-apartment complex is David Parisier of New York-based Paredim Communities. The seller was a Miami Beach-based real estate firm, The Morgan Reed Group.

City land records show that, on the same day that Parisier’s company bought the Taft, it also took out a $49 million mortgage loan for the College Street property from Liberty Bank.

The Taft’s sale marks the latest local real estate transaction of a large residential or commercial complex for well above its city-appraised value, which determines how much the property owner owes in local taxes. Click here, here and here for other recent examples.

In a phone interview, Parisier told the Independent that his company’s purchase of the Taft Apartments reflects his confidence in New Haven’s housing market. 

“We really like the dynamics and the opportunities, and the eds and meds drivers of the New Haven market,” he said.

He described the Taft as representing a ​“premier location.” As a century-old hotel-turned-luxury apartment complex, the Taft is a ​“prominent building” downtown, he noted.

“It’s a grand property in an outstanding location that has been operated very cleanly, very professionally” since being converted into apartments over four decades ago.

Unlike the Cambridge Arms apartments on High Street, which Parisier’s company purchased in 2019 for over $25 million and which he described as ​“very, very Yale-centric,” the Taft has a pretty small share of Yale undergraduate tenants, Parisier said. 

Some of the building’s residents are undergrads, some are Yale grads, researchers, and staffers, and others are simply ​“market-rate” downtown renters, he said.

What are his company’s plans for the property?

Updates to common areas, ​“amenities,” the apartment units themselves, and the ​“branding” and ​“merchandising” of the building, Parisier said.

While the property is presently in good shape, he added, it’s also ​“very dated and it deserves to be on the cutting edge.”

Asked if his company plans to raise rents at the Taft, Parisier responded that, by some third party estimates and his company’s own research, rents in New Haven have risen by 21 percent in recent years. He said that rents at the Taft will almost certainly track with that trend.

And what about the purchase price? Why did his company pay twice the city’s latest appraised value of the property?

“We really don’t talk economics in our transactions,” Parisier said. ​“We feel that we bought it at a fair value.”

“I think we see significant future value” in the property, he continued. ​“And that doesn’t necessarily have a correlation to current value” as defined by the city tax assessor.

“We have to take multiple things into account.”

Click here and here for previous stories about how the city appraises property values, and here for a previous story about why real estate investors so frequently pay far more for a property than the city has appraised it as worth.

Parisier’s company, meanwhile, has already listed the Taft on its website, providing a sense of how Paredim plans on marketing the downtown complex.

“We are located steps from Yale University’s Campus, the New Haven Green as well as a short walk to Yale New Haven Hospital and the multitude of BioTech firms,” the website reads. ​“The Taft is the premier location for local professionals, Yale graduate and undergrad students, as well as empty nesters who are looking for the ideal city living location and who want to walk to everything New Haven has to offer. Newly renovated apartment homes with planned significant modernization of amenities with historic architectural charm, with easy access to restaurants, pubs, nightlife, and public transportation make living at The Taft a truly exceptional experience.”

Roundup: Mandy Drops $1.61M On 13 Apts.

In other recent local property transactions news:

• Affiliates of the local megalandlord Mandy Management spent a total of $1.61 million buying six different rental properties containing 13 different apartments. Those include the two-family house at 333 Blake St., the two-family house at 337 Blake St., the two-family house at 405 Blake St., the two-family house at 24 Farnham Ave., the two-family house at 215 Fitch St., and the three-family house at 722 Winchester Ave.

• On March 31, Orion WP LLC, a holding company controlled by Danuta and Emmanuel Tamiolakis, purchased the nine-unit mixed-use building at 99 Orange St. from BCT-099 LLC, a holding company controlled by Vincent Gojcaj, for $2.18 million. The property last sold for $2,131,500 in 2017, and the city last appraised it as worth $1,669,800.

• On April 5, 546 – 548 Chapel St LLC, a holding company controlled by Levi Stone, purchased the four-family house at 546 Chapel St. from 546 Chapel LLC, a holding company controlled by Mazi Scherban and the Ronald Scherban Family Trust, for $925,000. The city last appraised that property as worth $698,100.

• On April 7, i37 Center Street LLC, a holding company controlled by David Solarz, purchased the single-unit retail-office space at 37 Center St. from Vito and Joann Bonanno for $675,000. The city last appraised that property as worth $672,500.

• On March 8, Goose Nodes LLC, a holding company controlled by Gustavo Martinez, spent a total of $950,000 purchasing five single-family homes from Ronald Candelora. Those properties include 62 Perkins St., 120 Lawncrest Rd., 73 Rock St., 583 Columbus Ave., and 204 Eastern St.

See below for a full roundup of recent local property transactions.