News
HARLEM: TAHL PROPP INVESTS; JONATHAN ROSE BUILDS
December 18, 2008
| While many investors are sitting on the sidelines, Tahl Propp Equities’Rodney Propp and Joe Tahl are veering full-speed ahead, raising their sixth fund, valued at $500M, to capitalize on the collapse of the Manhattan market, the duo told us in their Park Avenue offices. |
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| Their firm was built from what they learned in the downturn of the early ‘90s; Rodney was at Drexel Burnam and Joe at Trump, where they deconstructed and rebuilt transactions. After forming their partnership in ‘97, they were one of the first (and now largest) investors in the Harlem market, buying elevator apartment buildings with land near Central Park for $30 PSF. Their $300M of total low-leverage investment over the past decade has yielded over 3,000 apartment and condo units, as well as 66 retail stores—and they expect more than $1B in returns over the next 10 years. |
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| Operators who followed them, they say, took out pro-forma loans based on projected income that never materialized, and now those loans are in default. This will create more opportunities for the firm, which plans on investing the fund through 2011 to buy buildings and loans in both Harlem and other Manhattan locations. |
 In the meantime, Joe and Rodney are biding time in Harlem, waiting on approvals of two affordable housing complexes totaling 700k SF in East Harlem, as well as renewing HUD contracts on 2k apartment units to ensure that lower to middle-income residents can still afford the market. With JV partner RFR Realty, they’re also in the late architectural and flag-negotiating stages for the first luxury hotel to be built on Fifth Avenue(at 520 Fifth, pictured) in over a century. When not working, the doting dads keep busy, each with three kids under the age of six. |
