Mandy Empire Buys Up The Block

A local mega-landlord continued buying the block on Sherman Avenue — leaving tenants wary about what comes next, and in some cases making plans to move as quickly as possible.

According to city land records, on Nov. 30, Netz Edgeway 202 – 208 Sherman LLC purchased the 21-unit, two-building Edgewood apartment complex at 202 – 208 Sherman Ave. for $1,650,000 from LJS Realty LLC, a holding company owned by Lynne Schpero.

Netz Edgeway is one of the numerous companies controlled by Mandy Management, a property management company owned by Menachem Gurevitch and funded by a real estate private equity firm that has been gobbling up properties in the Annex, City Point, Fair Haven, Newhallville, and Fair Haven Heights as of late.

A company controlled by the mega-landlord, Mandy Management, bought a complex with two dozen apartments at 202 – 208 Sherman Ave. in the city’s latest land transactions, on a block where it already owns other rental properties.

Mandy’s newly acquired Sherman Avenue property last sold for $136,363 in 2005. The city last appraised 202 – 208 Sherman at a combined sum of $863,800 in 2017.

Outside the two-story, red-brick Sherman Avenue apartment complex one recent afternoon, several current tenants expressed skepticism about the new owners of the building.

A 44-year-old tenant named Williams (he declined to give his full name) said that he has lived at 202 – 208 Sherman for over three years. In the first week of Mandy’s ownership, he said, his electricity was cut.

The reason for the power outage, he said, was that his previous landlord deducted Williams’s electricity bills from his $1,175 monthly rent payment. Williams said that the new landlords assumed that the tenant was paying for electricity independent of rent.

Williams said that Mandy put him up at the Regal Inn near the Wilbur Cross Parkway for two nights as he waited for the utility companies to restore electricity to his apartment.

“They should have done their homework better,” Williams said about Mandy.

Furthermore, he said, all of the food he had in his refrigerator spoiled during the power outage. He said he gets only $219 each month in food stamps, and that he had spent $150 at the beginning of the month on meat. All of that food, he said, is now spoiled.

“Now I got no meat,” he said.

Mandy property manager Yudi Gurevitch said by email that some of the tenants in the apartment complex have their utilities included in their rent payments, while others pay for utilities independently of rent.

He said Mandy emailed the electricity company UI when it bought the building and requested that the tenant accounts be moved under Mandy’s name.

“Unfortunately it could take sometimes up to 24 hours for them to make that switch,” Gurevitch wrote. ​“The tenants that were left without power were transferred to a hotel on our expense. The problem has since been rectified.”

A 61-year-old tenant named Glenford, who said he has been living at the Sherman Avenue complex for just two months, said he is well aware of Mandy Management’s reputation as landlords through his own work as a self-employed handyman in the neighborhood.

“Mandy sucks,” he said. He said the reputation is that Mandy buys up properties en masse, doesn’t put enough money into upkeep, and then runs them into the ground. ​“They just patch stuff,” he said, ​“and they take forever” to respond to tenant maintenance requests.

“Mandy management takes the maintenance and upkeep of our properties very seriously,” Mandy’s Yudi Gurevitch told the Independent by email, ​“and have an excellent staff to do so.”

A third tenant named Ron said that he is shacking up with a friend at the Sherman Avenue complex until he gets off of the Housing Authority of New Haven’s wait list and secures an apartment of his own.

“Mandy Management,” he said, standing in a tan hoodie and sweat pants at the corner of Sherman and Edgewood, ​“they ain’t no good.”

Those properties join one of the city’s largest and fastest-growing real estate portfolios: the Netz/Mandy portfolio. The Netz/Mandy operation works like this: Netz, a real estate private equity firm chartered in Connecticut, based in New York, and publicly traded on the Tel Aviv stock exchange, is owned in part by Gurevitch. It owns over $150 million in residential and commercial real estate in Florida, Georgia, and elsewhere, including 332 properties in New Haven, Chief Investment Officer Frank Micali told a recent community meeting. It buys New Haven properties under separately established limited liability corporations (LLCs). Gurevitch is the founder and owner of the local real estate empire Mandy Management, one of New Haven’s largest operators of low-income rental apartments. It manages all the Netz properties in town.

Lead Paint Legacy

City land records show that Lynne Schpero, the previous owner of the 202 – 208 Sherman apartment complex, invested years and over $150,000 in public dollars abating lead paint hazards at the property.

Between 2007 and 2008, Schpero received over $156,000 in four separate lead abatement loans from the federal Lead Based Paint Hazard Reduction Grant program, which is administered by the city’s anti-blight Livable City Initiative (LCI). The city released Schpero from all four loans on Oct. 4, 2013, over five years after giving her the money.

Schpero could not be reached for comment by the publication time of this article.

On Jan. 25, 2007, LCI granted Schpero a $12,000 lead abatement loan from its federal Lead Based Paint Hazard Reduction Grant Program to clean up Apt. B1. On Jan. 31, 2007, LCI gave Schpero another $54,470 in lead abatement loans to cover abatements at apartments A1, A5, B2, B3, and B5 in 202 Sherman and at apartments B2 and B4 in 208 Sherman.

On May 31, 2007,. LCI gave another $22,439.38 in lead abatement loans to Schpero to clean up apartments A2, A3, and A4 in 208 Sherman. And on Feb. 19, 2008, LCI gave $67,300 in lead abatement loans to Schpero. This abatement loan was not tied to any specific apartments.

Schpero also received another $200,000 in public dollars in 2008 and 2010 to fund lead abatements at properties she owns at 143 – 145 Pendleton St. and at 1427 – 1437 Ella T. Grasso Blvd. The city released Schpero from those loans in 2016 and in 2017.

The only lead abatement order for an apartment at 202 – 208 Sherman available on the online city land records database came in March 2006, when the city’s Health Department sent Schpero a lead abatement order for Unit B2. City lead inspector Glenda Buenaventura found toxic levels of lead paint in the second floor living room, the bedroom hallway, the second floor bathroom, and elsewhere in the apartment. The city released Schpero from the lead abatement order later that month.

Sherman Block Cluster

The two-story red-brick apartment complex isn’t the only residential real estate that Mandy owns on the Sherman Avenue block between Edgewood Avenue and Chapel Street. The local mega-landlord also owns the three-story, 15-unit apartment complex at 285 Edgewood Ave., which sits right across the street at the corner of Edgewood and Sherman. Mandy purchased that complex in 2000 through its holding company T&G Investments, LLC.

Mandy also owns the three-family house at 170 Sherman Ave., near the intersection of Chapel and Sherman. Mandy purchased the two-and-a-half story property in 2011.

And Mandy isn’t the only mega-landlord to have ample investments in this stretch of Sherman Avenue. Four different holding companies owned by Ocean Management’s Shmuel Aizenberg also own 17 units in four different buildings on Sherman between Chapel and Elm Streets.

Recent Lead Roundup

In other recent lead notices, the city’s Health Department sent two lead abatement order to Pike International owner Shmully Hecht for toxic levels of lead paint in two separate apartments in his 47-unit Edgewood complex at 226 – 234 Ellsworth Ave.

The Health Department sent Hecht a lead abatement order for 234 Ellsworth Ave., Unit E4 on Nov. 7. The order says that city lead inspector Jomika Bogan inspected the property on Nov. 3 and found toxic levels of lead paint in the wall trim of the apartment’s hallway. The order notes that one or more children with elevated blood lead levels currently reside at the apartment.

And on Oct. 26, the Health Department sent Hecht a lead abatement order for 232 Ellsworth Ave., Unit D8. The order notes that Bogan inspected the property on Oct. 18 and found toxic levels of lead paint in the apartment’s kitchen, living room, bedroom, and elsewhere. One or more children with elevated blood lead levels currently reside at the property, according to the order.

Pike property manager Levi Stone said that Pike had already abated the 232 Ellsworth, Unit D8 apartment of lead paint hazards before the city’s October inspection. ​“There was a difference between what our company tested and what the city tested,” he said. He said Pike is currently waiting for the city’s Health Department to provide Pike with an update on if and how to proceed with any further necessary lead abatement of Unit D8. Stone did not provide an update on the 234 Ellsworth, Unit E4 lead abatement order by the publication time of this article.

On Nov. 27, the city department sent Oliver Watts, Jr. a lead abatement order for toxic levels of lead paint at an apartment he owns at 57 Pendleton St., Apt. 3F. City lead inspector Jomika Bogan found high lead paint levels during her Nov. 26 inspection in the apartment’s bathroom, kitchen, common back hallway, and elsewhere. The order notes that one or more children with elevated blood lead levels currently reside at the apartment.

On Nov. 28, LCI provided a $46,620 lead abatement loan to Myron LLC, a holding company owned by NHR Properties’s Juan Salas-Romer, to clean up high lead paint levels at a first floor apartment at 47 Stanley St. The city sent Salas-Romer a lead abatement order for the property back on Sept. 13, 2016, noting toxic levels of lead paint in the apartment’s kitchen, pantry, living room, bathroom, and elsewhere.

On Dec. 6, the city’s Health Department signed off on Salas-Romer’s lead management plan for the Stanley Street property.

The objective of the lead management plan, the document reads, ​“is to periodically monitor the surfaces that contain lead-based paint in the dwelling/unit to ensure that they remain intact, and if any defects or failure of these surfaces are observed they will be repaired or abated as appropriate.”

On Nov. 16, the city’s Health Department sent a lead abatement order to John Arnone for toxic lead paint levels at an apartment he owns at 304 Winthrop Ave., first floor. During her Nov. 14 inspection, city lead inspector Jomika Bogan found high levels of lead paint in the apartments bedrooms, kitchen, common back hall, and elsewhere.

On Nov. 20, the city’s Health Department sent a lead abatement order to Shneor Edelkopf and Eliyahu Edelkopf for toxic lead paint levels at an apartment they own at 352 Howard Ave., second floor. During her Nov. 20 inspection, city lead inspector Jomika Bogan found high lead paint levels in the apartment’s bedrooms, kitchen, back hall, and elsewhere. The order also notes that one or more children with elevated blood lead levels reside at the apartment.

Recent Property Sale Roundup

In other recent property sales, Cristian Mitra purchased a three-family house at 270 Edgewood Ave. from Abdullah Soliman for $289,000 on Nov. 30. The property last sold for $112,500 in 2016. The city last appraised the Dwight property at $211,200 in 2017. Soliman just recently finished going through housing court for two separate child lead poisoning-related cases involving his two-family house at 75 Sherman Ave.

In West River, Matthew Cotton purchased the three-family house at 129 Winthrop Ave. from New Haven Redevelopers LLC for $178,500 on Nov. 29. The property last sold for $140,646 in 2010. The city last appraised the property at $189,400 in 2017.

NHR Properties, which is owned by local developer Juan Salas-Romer, is in the process of divesting itself of some of its smaller two- and three-family properties to focus more resources and energy on its larger projects, like the Palladium and New Heights.

Previous property sale coverage:

• Roots Planted In Newhallville
• Latest Sales: Mandy Buying Spree Continues
• Latest Sales: Mandy Expands In City Point
• Latest Sales: East Rock Home Buy Tops $1M
• Latest Deals: Beulah’s 5th Rehab On Block
• Latest Sales: NHR Sheds Small To Focus Big
• Latest Sales: Mandy Buys In Heights
• Home Sale Price Doubles In 13 Years