Benchmark Sells Brooklyn Heights Apartment Building at a $7M Loss

Benchmark Real Estate Group cut its losses on a 67-unit apartment building in Brooklyn Heights.

Benchmark sold the 12-story building at 25 Monroe Place to Ronen Ben-Josef’s Ben-Josef Group Holdings for $43.5 million, according to property records. That’s $7 million less than the $50 million Benchmark bought it for in 2015, and a 38 percent discount from the $70 million asking price when Benchmark put the property on the market in 2019.

Ben-Josef could not be reached for comment while Benchmark Real Estate did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This is the second acquisition for Ben-Josef in recent months following the June purchase of a 29-unit apartment building at 82 Fourth Avenue in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, in which it paid $20 million to the seller, developer Abraham Posner, Commercial Observer reported at the time.

25 Monroe Place was listed by JLL (JLL)’s Jeffrey Julien, Rob Hinckley and Steven Rutman, who were at HFF at the time, when it went on the market in 2019 and highlighted bespoke, luxury details in each of the units as well as its location in one of the priciest neighborhoods in Brooklyn.

Described as having “condo-quality finishes,” the building from 1938 is in close proximity to the ​​Brooklyn waterfront, Brooklyn Bridge Park, Downtown Brooklyn and Dumbo, the listing said. It was advertised as “a rare opportunity to acquire a trophy asset in the most sought-after neighborhood in Brooklyn.”

A spokesperson for JLL did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.