State Official Grows Local Landlord Biz

A top state economic development official and local zoning board member is also a city landlord on the move — actively buying, renovating, managing, and selling rental properties in New Haven’s red-hot housing market.

That public official/private landlord is Alexandra Daum.

The 33-year-old downtown resident has served as the deputy commissioner and chief investment officer for the state Department of Economic and Community Development (DECD) since March 2020. She has been a member of the city Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) since last September.

She also heads a local real estate company, Field Properties, that she founded two years ago after working as a senior development manager at NHR Group and, prior to that, as a project manager in Northern California real estate and as a corporate consultant for Bain.

According to recent city land record filings, Daum remains an active player in the New Haven residential rental real estate market even as she has assumed new local and state public responsibilities.

Daum told the Independent by email that she currently owns 14 properties in New Haven, including her personal residence.

Those rental properties include two adjacent three-family homes on Huntington Street on the Prospect Hill/Newhallville border, a handful of two- and three-family homes on Portsea Street and Vernon Street in the Hill, a seven-unit apartment building on Sheffield Avenue near Albertus Magnus College, and, her most recent purchase, a six-unit apartment building on Cottage Street in East Rock. Daum owns these properties through a variety of holding companies, including Stay New Haven LLC, 58 Vernon LLC, Portsea Properties LLC, and others with names that reflect the address of the buildings in question.

According to the city’s online land record database, her most recent property sale took place on May 13, when her holding company 68 Sheldon LLC sold the three-family house at 68 Sheldon Terrace for $520,000 to George Xu and Kathleen Chan. Daum’s company bought that property for $390,000 in 2019, and the city last appraised it as worth $205,800.

Her most recent local real estate purchase, meanwhile, took place on Feb. 26, when her company Stay New Haven LLC bought the six-unit apartment house at 146 Cottage St. from Laurence Nadel for $704,438. That property last sold for $320,000 in 1987, and the city last appraised it as worth $527,200.

Daum was asked about potential conflicts of interest among her state job overseeing public investment in local economic development projects, her local volunteer government position reviewing and voting on land-use-law-relief applications, and her local landlord job buying, managing, and selling residential real estate in New Haven.

She told the Independent that she has worked hard to maintain clear, ethical boundaries between those roles.

“For both my role at the State and on the Zoning Board there are clear procedures in place to ensure that there are no conflicts of interest,” she said by email. ​“On the BZA, if an application comes forward for a project that would financially impact a property in which I have an interest, I would recuse myself from voting on that matter. The Corporation Counsel’s office is available to advise if there is any question as to whether I should recuse myself.

“At the State, if DECD was evaluating funding a project that would impact a property in which I have an interest, another senior DECD official (as opposed to me) would make any discretionary decisions/awards for that project.”

Daum told the Independent that she checked with the Connecticut Office of State Ethics before taking on the BZA role. That state office ​“confirmed that there was no conflict from their point of view,” she said.

Since joining the BZA, a board that has been plagued in recent years by spotty attendance, successful legal challenges, and occasionally inscrutable (and seemingly politically influenced) decisions, Daum has encouraged her fellow commissioners to stick to the letter of the law and to treat similar applications equally. She has also advocated for loosening the city’s parking minimum mandates to make it easier to build more housing.

A tenant at a Wooster Square rental property that Daum used to own, meanwhile, praised the local landlord as exceptionally responsive and considerate.

“Alexandra was great. She was fantastic,” said the tenant, who asked to remain anonymous for this article. They said that Daum was ​“super prompt” in answering calls from renters and in fixing up the property when it needed maintenance.

That tenant’s one complaint about living at in an apartment formerly owned by Daum? ​“The current landlord,” the tenant said, whom they described as less communicative and harder to work with than Daum.

“Market Very Strong For Sellers”

Recent land record filings also show that, when Daum sells one of her local rental properties, she usually dose so at quite the markup on the price she bought it for.

Her most recent sale, of the three-family home at 68 Sheldon Terrace in early May, was for $130,000 more than she bought that property for two years ago.

Her second most recent sale took place on Feb. 4 of this year.

Her company 66 William LLC sold the six-unit apartment house at 66 William St. and the three-family house at 70 William St. to William Street Rentals LLC — a holding company controlled by Catherine Jenney, Robert Jenney, and Barbara Keegan — for a combined sum of $1.35 million.

That was $460,000 more than the $890,000 she paid for those properties two years ago when she bought them from Zevulun Associates LLC, a holding company controlled by Pike International’s Shmully Hecht.

City building permit records show that Daum fixed up the two properties she sold this year at a profit. Those online building permit records show that she pulled a permit for a new steam boiler for 68 Sheldon Terrace in September 2019. She also pulled a permit for new natural gas power vented water heaters and new outdoor condensers for 66 William St. in January 2021.

“68 Sheldon and the William Street properties were in need of a lot of love when I bought them so I did add a lot of value by renovating the units,” Daum told the Independent when asked about how she improved these properties between when she bought and sold them.

“In terms of why I sold them, as you know the market is very strong right now for sellers!”

Mandy Spends $3.6M+ On 37 More Apts.

In other recent property transactions, affiliate companies of the local megalandlord Mandy Management recently spent more than $3.6 million buying 12 different properties containing 37 different housing units.

Those recent Mandy purchases include:

• 224 Wooster St., a six-unit apartment building that Mandy’s SFR 2 DE LLC bought for $1 million on May 11.

• 32 Clinton Ave., a nine-unit apartment building that SFR DE LLC bought for $700,000 on April 29.

• 1596 Ella T. Grasso Blvd., a three-family house that SFR DE LLC bought for $350,000 on April 30.

• 91 Norton St., a three-family house that SFR DE LLC bought for $260,000 on May 24.

• 359 Sherman Ave., a three-family house that SFR DE LLC bought for $240,000 on April 27.

• 126 Rosette St., a two-family house that SFR DE LLC bought for $210,000 on April 30.

• 92 Asylum St., a three-family house that SFR DE LLC bought for $200,000 on May 12.

• 143 County St., a two-family house that SFR DE LLC bought for $170,000 on May 14.

• 308 Poplar St., a two-family house that SFR DE LLC bought for $157,000 on May 24.

• 41 Osborn Ave., a two-family house that SFR DE LLC bought for $135,000 on April 30.

• 66 Crescent St., a single-family house that Mandy’s 66 Crescent LLC bought for $103,500 on May 10.

• 16 Rock St., a single-family house that SFR DE LLC bought for $78,000 on May 20.