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Below Houston

Published November 1, 2026 · By Mark Kvetkovskiy, CCIM

Two adjoining Lower Manhattan brick buildings, one with a ground-floor storefront and the other with restrained rooftop protection scaffolding.

From Hudson Square to the Lower East Side

Owning the deed is one thing, but controlling the building is another. At 212 Bowery, the seller didn't have a deal until he agreed to pay the last tenant $25,000 to leave, while the buyer of 199 Chrystie got a steep discount by taking on a noisy gym and a condo board lawsuit. At 575 Broadway, H&M's lease gives it control of its old storefront until 2030, and the new owners at 75 Essex and 556 Broome can't build until they get past City Hall or a hostile neighbor next door. This month, a building's value comes down to who else has a say in how you use it.

In this edition

Select a numbered pin to read its story. OpenFreeMap · © OpenMapTiles · OpenStreetMap
01 / 199 Chrystie Street

Lower East Side property sells with a lawsuit attached at an 11% cap rate

The condo board at 199 Chrystie has been suing both the landlord and the gym to shut down the noise. Now the buyer owns the lease, too.

Street-level view of 199 Chrystie Street, with a deep concrete canopy over a glass ground-floor storefront and large planters on the sidewalk.
199 Chrystie Street, the ground-floor commercial condo under the concrete canopy. Photo: Meridian Investment Sales offering memorandum ↗

Many mornings last fall, the weights started dropping at 199 Chrystie Street before 8 AM. 311 logged 7 commercial noise complaints against the gym on the building's ground floor between July and November 2025, 6 of them between 6:58 AM and 8:00 AM.

In March, the condo's board of managers sued both the gym and Sagamore AK Property Company LLC, the developer that owned its space, seeking an injunction against high-decibel activity in the unit and a money judgment of at least $1,000,000 (Index No. 651388/2026, New York County Supreme Court). Six months later, the space sold for $1,800,000 ($549.79/SF), 35.71% under its $2,800,000 ask. It was the developer's last unit; the 14 apartments upstairs had already sold for $60.7M.

$1,800,000
sale price
10.99%
cap rate at sale price
35.71%
below asking price
Read the full story ＋

On paper, the buyer, Liron Razak, got a bargain. Meridian Investment Sales' offering memorandum put the unit's net operating income at $197,901 and marketed it at a 7.1% cap. At the $1,800,000 sale price, that same NOI is a 10.99% cap. The gym's rent started at $240,000 a year on a 10-year lease and covers 100% of the real estate taxes. Razak financed $990,000, 55% of the price, with Habib American Bank.

What he also bought is a single-tenant unit with a tenant facing legal action. The board has extended its own deadline to serve a complaint 7 times, most recently on September 25, and as of October 22 it still hasn't.

02 / 212 Bowery

Bowery building lands a buyer 4 days after a $25,000 eviction deal, selling 29.89% below asking price

After 212 Bowery sat unsold as a rental for 4 years, Midas Equities paid $6.1 million and filed plans to double the 4-story building to 8 floors with 7 apartments above a store.

Sunlit brick facades at 212 Bowery, with dark metal fire escapes, arched lower windows, and adjoining buildings.
212 Bowery, between Prince and Spring, in the 2022 sale listing. Photo: Marcus & Millichap offering memorandum.

Marcus & Millichap listed 212 Bowery in May 2022 at $8.7 million, at a 4.34% cap rate, and nobody bought it as a rental. It only sold once owner Ellio Nurieli emptied it.

Nurieli’s company, Bowery Realty Associates, bought the property for $3.55 million in 2007 and spent 2 years emptying it. The 2nd-floor lease let the owner end it for demolition starting in 2023. The ground-floor tenant, Andrew Edlin Gallery (paying $28,663 a month), moved to 392 Broadway after its lease ended in June 2025. That left Keeley Studios, a 4th-floor photography studio, staying past an old lease that expired in 2018 and paying no rent since May 2025. Nurieli filed an eviction lawsuit in August (Case No. LT-313526-25), won the right to evict in October, and signed a court deal on November 14, 2025, paying the studio $25,000 to move out by December 26.

$6.1 million
sale price
29.89%
below asking price
8 stories
planned building
Read the full story ＋

4 days after that court deal, condo builder Midas Equities signed a contract to buy the building. An empty building was what finally sold it.

In March 2026, 5 months before closing, Midas, with Simon Lichtenstein as owner of record, filed plans to double the 1900 building to 8 stories and 13,689 square feet, putting 7 apartments above a ground-floor store. Midas closed the deal on August 17 for $6.1 million, 29.89% below the asking price, or $445.61 for every square foot of the planned building. It borrowed $3.3 million from Hirshmark Capital on a short-term loan. The city approved a partial demolition on September 2, and on October 5 it issued a permit for a construction fence, though the Buildings Department still has objections to the main expansion plans and no condo plan is on file yet.

03 / 575 Broadway

Zara's owner takes H&M's SoHo storefront in a sublease that shores up 575 Broadway

The deal puts Massimo Dutti into a closed SoHo storefront and keeps H&M's rent flowing to landlord Peter Brant, who still has to fill 96,000 square feet of offices upstairs before a $120.5 million loan comes due in 2027.

Massimo Dutti storefront at 575 Broadway, with an ornate dark facade, glass entrance doors, clothing displays, and 142 Mercer signage.
Massimo Dutti's Mercer Street entrance at 575 Broadway, which runs through the block to 142 Mercer. Photo: Massimo Dutti ↗

To bring Massimo Dutti back to New York after closing its U.S. stores in 2019, Zara’s parent company, Inditex, turned to rival H&M. Inditex sublet H&M’s dark storefront at 575 Broadway, getting onto a tight block fast while keeping retail rent flowing to landlord Peter Brant before his $120.5 million loan comes due in December 2027.

H&M had closed its sister shop, & Other Stories, in the 11,000-square-foot space, but still owed rent through January 2030. Because JLL marketed the store already built out, Inditex took over in April, filed $2.66 million in renovations, and opened Massimo Dutti on October 23, just 7 months after its first demolition filing.

For Brant, the deal protects the building's lifeline. After Estée Lauder left 64,122 square feet last year, 575 Broadway was just 48% occupied in June with 96,000 SF of office available. Meanwhile, the building's BMO 2023-C4 loan offering documents show Brant's loan carries a fixed 7.49% interest rate, and his partnership's ground rent, $5,089,118 a year in early 2023, rises with inflation by at least 3.5% every January through 2060.

$5,089,118 a year
ground rent in early 2023
96,000 SF
office available
48%
building occupied in June
Read the full story ＋

The storefronts now carry the property. According to the July 2022 rent roll in those same documents, retail paid $17.7 million a year, 68.6% of the building’s rent, led by Prada at $12 million through 2035 and H&M at $4.18 million ($552.45 a square foot on the ground floor).

What Inditex pays H&M isn't public. Still, the Real Estate Board of New York reported that SoHo Broadway's average asking rent fell from $726 a square foot in late 2025 ($750 median) to $599 in the first half of 2026. H&M's sublease puts a fresh flagship on the block without Brant having to re-let the space himself.

04 / 75 Essex Street

After buying 75 Essex out of foreclosure for $17.75M, developer plans a 19-room hotel with no storefronts, leaving no room for the ground-floor shop there since 1977

New owner Javier Martinez dropped the old plan for a 16-story apartment tower to instead add 2 floors to the existing 4-story building, though he won't get city approval to pull work permits until at least September 2027.

Four-story tan-brick building at 75 Essex Street, with arched upper windows and a graffiti-covered stone storefront with closed metal shutters.
75 Essex Street, the former Eastern Dispensary, in January 2026. Photo: Artifact's land-use application to the Department of City Planning ↗

Artifact is getting rid of the street-level stores at the corner of Essex and Broome. On October 20, developer Javier Martinez (through Artifact No. 75 LLC) applied for the special city permit a hotel needs on this block (application No. 270176ZSM). He plans to add 2 floors to the 4-story Eastern Dispensary at 75 Essex Street, turning it into a 6-story, 78-foot, 19-room hotel.

Artifact bought the troubled building in March for $17.75 million, using a $14.34 million loan from Genesis Capital that combined the building's old $9 million mortgage with $5.34 million in new cash. The seller handed over the deed just 13 weeks after a court-appointed receiver took over the property, the result of a foreclosure lawsuit by the lender, LES Mixed Use LLC, over a defaulted $9 million loan. By September, after Artifact took over, 8 of the 10 Department of Buildings applications had been withdrawn for the previous owner's approved plan, a 16-story, 18-apartment building filed under Soft Stone Development Group LLC.

$17.75 million
foreclosure purchase
19-room hotel
planned hotel
2 floors
added to the 4-story building
Read the full story ＋

Instead of building to the maximum size zoning allows, the 20,198-square-foot plan uses about two-thirds of the limit and puts hotel space on every level from the basement to the 6th floor. Unlike Artifact’s other nearby project, a roughly 40-room hotel at 23, 25 and 27 Allen Street that keeps its storefronts and filed for full demolition on October 7, the 75 Essex plan has no stores at all.

That leaves no room in the future building for Eisner Bros., the clothing store on the ground floor since 1977, whose family bought the building in 1985. The city's public review process won't officially start until February 27, 2027, and final approval won't come until at least September 24, 2027, before Artifact can pull a single construction permit for the hotel.

05 / 556 Broome Street

Hudson Square buyer pays $9,555,000 cash to tear a building down and has to take a "hostile neighbor" to court

To build 14 stories on Claes Oldenburg's old Broome Street lot, the developer needs to put roof protection on the condo next door for 30 months. The next-door penthouse owner who claims he is worth $50 million refused to make a deal.

Close-up portrait of a smiling Claes Oldenburg wearing round glasses, a dark blazer, and a dark shirt against a blurred beige background.
Claes Oldenburg in 2012. Photo: Raimond Spekking, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons ↗

Claes Oldenburg, the pop artist behind the giant spoons and clothespins, lived and worked at 556 Broome Street in Hudson Square from 1971 until he died in 2022, at 93. In June his trust sold the 5-story loft to Jason Kimmel's Extended Management for $9,555,000 in cash ($923.19/SF). On August 20, 11 weeks after closing, a $375,000 full demolition was filed. It sat in Buildings Department objections from mid-September until October 30.

To knock 556 down and build, the buyer needs about 30 months of access to 554 Broome, the condo next door, for roof protection, scaffolding and monitoring. 554 used to be Oldenburg's too. He bought both buildings in 1971, sold 554 in 1998, and it became a condo in 2000. On June 22 Extended Management's lawyers sent the condo board a license agreement to sign. The board's lawyer asked for more information, and EM followed up 5 times.

$9,555,000
cash purchase
14 stories
described in petition
30 months
requested neighbor access
Read the full story ＋

On October 20 the buyer petitioned the court to force access, naming 554 Broome Street LLC, the condo board and the penthouse owner, Butterfields Butter LLC (Index No. 163140/2026, New York County Supreme Court). The petition says that on a September 14 call, penthouse owner James Douglas Hislop, who does not live there, answered "f*** no" to negotiating, said he would be a "hostile neighbor," and added that he was worth $50 million.

Justice Arlene Bluth signed the order to show cause on October 22. On October 23, the day it was filed, the buyer withdrew it at 3:47 p.m. and refiled the same petition as a new case. The petition describes building 14 stories of 100% affordable housing, though no new-building plans have been submitted to the city.

More on the local market

Lower East Side
Q2 2026 Retail Report

Published July 29, 2026

Read the report ↗