Thomas Breen photo
327 Newhall St.: First flipped, then renovated?
A local landlord made a $50,000-plus profit in one day buying and flipping a two-family house in Newhallville — and now promises to fix up the rundown building in his capacity as its property manager.
According to the city land records database, on Aug. 18, JSA Realty LLC — a holding company controlled by local landlord Shneor Edelkopf and Ariel Mangami of Teaneck, N.J. — purchased the two-family house at 327 Newhall St. for $205,000 from Zhu Liang and Katherine Khoo-Liang of New Hyde Park, N.Y.
The very next day, on Aug. 19, JSA Realty flipped the same property for $260,000 to Keter 2 LLC, a holding company controlled by Abraham Taichman of Cedarhurst, N.Y.
Soon before buying the flipped property, Taichman’s company pulled a $208,000 mortgage from the New York City-based lender Loan Funder LLC Series 24254, with the Mortgage Electronic Registration System (MERS) serving as the lender’s nominee.
The city last appraised the two-family home at 327 Newhall St. as worth $110,500, less than half the flip-sales price.
“I sell it to people from New York, they buy it, we make a profit, and we move forward,” Edelkopf said during a phone interview with the Independent when asked why he bought and then immediately flipped the Newhallville rental property at a $55,000 markup.
Is there anything wrong with making a profit? he asked. Not to his eyes, he said, especially given that he plans on sticking with and looking after the property even though he owned it for just one day.
Now that the property is owned by Taichman, Edelkopf said, he will serve as 327 Newhall’s property manager.
“Basically what I offer is a package,” he said. “I sell the property, but also I make sure the property” is taken care of for person or company to whom he sells it.
Clearing out 327 Newhall’s groundfloor apt.
Edelkopf said he and the new landlord have already started investing in fixing up the aged and battered property to make it a better place to live for its tenants.
“We are putting all the necessary improvements in the place,” he said. That means new floors and new kitchens, he promised. “We’re not just selling the property. We’re trying to take care of the house, to take care of the tenants, to stabilize” the property.
Edelkopf said he doesn’t plan on raising the current $1,400 monthly rent for the tenant who occupies the building’s second and third floors. He said the two-floor apartment could fetch as high as $1,800 on the open market, but he’ll be keeping it as is.
Edelkopf said he has just found a new tenant with a federal Section 8 rental subsidy who will be moving into the first-floor apartment. He said he plans on charging what the market will bear and what Section 8 will pay for that first-floor unit.
“I believe New Haven has a lot of potential,” Edelkopf said about why he buys, sells, and manages properties in the city.
According to the state business registry, Edelkopf’s JSA Realty is based out of 550 Whalley Ave. According to other recent property transactions, Edelkopf also runs or co-runs the local real estate holding companies CMS Realty LLC, CMS Realty 2 LLC, MSA Investments LLC, MYM Realty 2 LLC, and Y&S Realty LLC.
The current upstairs tenant at 327 Newhall St., meanwhile, is a 61-year-old man named Sabou Julious.
During a brief interview outside of the two-and-a-half story home at the corner of Newhall and Read Streets, Julious said he has lived at 327 Newhall for the past five years.
He said he too has a Section 8 federal rental subsidy, and pays $350 per month for his apartment. Section 8 covers the rest.
Julious said he hasn’t met his new landlord yet, but he has seen that renovation work has begun on the first floor.
What does he make of the profitable flip of the place he’s called home for the past half-decade?
It’s all good with him, he said, “if he fix it up.”
The new owner of 327 Newhall St., Abraham Taichman, did not respond to a request for comment by the publication time of this article.
Click here and here for previous stories about other recent local housing flips.
And click here, and see below, for a roundup of all recent local property transactions.
