A New York-based landlord — which appears, based on land records, to be an affiliate of the same company at the center of a nationwide tenants union organizing movement — has purchased a 41-unit Annex apartment complex for $5.87 million.

That property transaction is documented in a warranty deed that was posted to the city’s land records database on Tuesday.

According to that document, Gersh Terrace CT LLC paid $5.87 million to Terrace St LLC to buy 70 Terrace St. That 41-unit, eight-building complex last sold for $3.95 million in 2019. The city most recently appraised the property for tax purposes as worth $3,956,500.

The seller of the property is a company controlled by Amit Lakhotia of Westport. In an email comment, Lakhotia told the Independent that he decided to sell this property after owning it for six years because “my focus is on new construction projects I am doing in New Britain and Bridgeport.”

The buyer of 70 Terrace, meanwhile, appears to be an affiliate of the Spring Valley, N.Y.-based The Capital Realty Group.

That’s the same company that owns the Park Ridge and Sunset Ridge apartment complexes on the west and east sides of town. A tenants union of elderly renters has already formed at Park Ridge, while a new one is trying to form at Sunset Ridge. Outside of New Haven, tenants unions have also popped up in recent weeks at Capital Realty-owned properties in Kansas City, Missouri; Detroit, Michigan; Billings, Montana; and Louisville, Kentucky, as part of a nationwide push to organize tenants across Capital Realty’s vast portfolio of properties.

Established in 1999, Capital Realty is one of the 15 largest landlords in the affordable housing industry, owning 21,689 units as of Jan. 1, according to Affordable Housing Finance magazine. The National Affordable Housing Management Association, which represents 75 percent of the affordable housing industry, reported at the beginning of this year that all Capital Realty developments receive federal subsidies.

Reached for comment for this article, Brenda Schwartz, an employee at The Capital Realty Group, told the Independent that the recent property transaction involving 70 Terrace St. is “not related” to The Capital Realty Group.

The warranty deed documenting the transaction, however, indicates in the top left corner of the first page that the document should be returned to The Capital Realty Group at the company’s address in Spring Valley, N.Y. (See a copy of that document below.)

That same warranty deed’s text also identifies the business address of 70 Terrace’s buyer, Gersh Terrace CT LLC, as the same Spring Valley, N.Y. address as Capital Realty.

State business registry records, meanwhile, show that the managing member of Gersh Terrace CT LLC is a man named Samson Rosner, whose business address is the same as Capital Realty’s Spring Valley address, and who was quoted in a previous Independent article about tenant complaints at Sunset Ridge. (In that 2024 article, Capital Realty had forwarded questions about the Sunset Ridge property to Rosner, and Rosner had said that that property was not affiliated with Capital Realty, even though the property is owned by a Capital Realty affiliate). State business records also show that Brenda Schwartz’s Capital Realty email address is listed as Gersh Terrace CT LLC’s business email address (see below).

While Gersh Terrace CT LLC’s original certificate of organization filing from July indicates that that holding company’s principal office address is the same as Capital Realty’s in Spring Valley, a “Change of Business Address” form filed with the state on Oct. 20 indicates that the LLC’s new principal office address is “70 Terrace St., East Haven, CT” and that its mailing address is in Yalesville, Connecticut.

Schwartz did not respond to a follow up request for comment about the apparent discrepancies between her statement that the 70 Terrace transaction is not related to The Capital Realty Group and all of these indications that an affiliate of The Capital Realty Group is now that property’s owner.

In an email sent to the Independent Friday afternoon, the Connecticut Tenants Union — which has been leading the organizing drives at Park Ridge and Sunset Ridge — provided the following statement: “Capital Realty Group’s expansion in New Haven is troubling, considering their patterns of behavior that we’ve witnessed nationwide: allowing tenants to live in poor and often dangerous conditions; engaging in tenant mistreatment including intimidation and fear-mongering, extreme surveillance, favoritism and discrimination, denial of disability rights, and unjust evictions; and their aggressive union-busting tactics including banning organizers and reporters from their properties, contracting a union-busting law firm, issuing unjustified lease violations to community leaders, and threatening and lying to tenants to dissuade them from unionizing. Connecticut Tenants Union is here to support any CRG tenants–current or future–who wish to protect themselves from these practices, improve their housing conditions, and hold their corporate landlord accountable.”

The first page of the warranty deed documenting the recent sale of 70 Terrace St. A Capital Realty employee said this transaction is “not related” to The Capital Realty Group, but did not offer an explanation as to why the buyer’s business address is the same as Capital Realty’s and the “return to” section of the document names Capital Realty.

The original “certificate of organization” form filed by Gersh Terrace CT LLC, from July, listing its office address as the same as Capital Realty’s, and listing “brenda@thecapitalrealty.com” as the business’s email address.

The second page of the July “certificate of organization” filing.

The Oct. 20 “change of business address” form for Gersh Terrace CT LLC.

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