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A century-old prewar rental on the Upper West Side is about to undergo a top-to-bottom luxury overhaul, marking the second time in less than a year that the same buyer and seller have closed a major deal in the neighborhood.
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Benchmark Real Estate Group, a Midtown-based developer, has acquired the 15-story building at 698 West End Avenue — at the corner of West 94th Street — for $42 million, Crain’s New York Business reported after a deed surfaced in city records this week. The seller was longtime Upper West Side landlord Heller Realty, which has owned the 90-unit property since 1998.Benchmark principal Jordan Vogel said the firm intends to renovate every apartment in the building and add new amenities, with the goal of repositioning it as a “premiere luxury rental” in the neighborhood. “New York City rarely offers entry points like this for such high quality real estate and we are excited to be buying when most others aren’t,” Vogel said.
The building, originally constructed in 1925, also goes by the alternate address of 272–278 West 94th Street. Recent Streeteasy listings show one-bedrooms starting at around $3,895 a month — a price point that will almost certainly climb once the renovation work is complete.
For Benchmark, the deal is the latest chapter in what’s becoming a recurring partnership with Heller. Last September, the firm paid $66 million in an all-cash deal for 250 West 85th Street — also a 15-story prewar rental, with 125 units, that the Heller family had owned since the 1960s. Together, the two transactions represent more than $100 million in Upper West Side real estate trading between the same buyer and seller in roughly eight months.
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Benchmark, founded in 2009, lists more than 60 assets across the tri-state area, Florida and Georgia on its website, with total asset value above $1.6 billion and roughly $570 million in equity invested. Its New York portfolio also includes 194 East 2nd Street in the East Village, 142 Sullivan Street in SoHo, and 144 Willow Street in Brooklyn Heights.Heller, meanwhile, is having a more complicated stretch. As we covered earlier this year when the foreclosure lawsuit was first filed in Manhattan state Supreme Court, the firm is currently fighting Blackstone, which has accused it of defaulting on a $17.3 million mortgage tied to two Upper West Side retail strips — one on Amsterdam Avenue near West 75th Street, and another along Broadway between West 108th and 109th streets.
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