Tenants, activists and press crowded the halls of Decrease Manhattan chapter court docket, desperate to see the brand new landlord, Zohar Levy.
Levy’s Summit positioned a $451 million stalking-horse bid for a 93-building, roughly 5,200-unit portfolio put out of business by Pinnacle Group. Now, the little-known investor, taking a break from a household trip in Europe to reply questions from the town and tenants’ attorneys by video name, was about to grow to be a New York Metropolis rent-stabilized landlord.
Did he know what would come subsequent?
“We’re conscious of the duty hooked up to managing such a portfolio,” Levy mentioned at his testimony in January.
Chapter court docket, often procedural, had changed into a testing floor for the way the town would fulfill its guarantees to tenants, as New York Metropolis’s new mayor Zohran Mamdani objected to Summit’s bid on the final minute and sought a delay within the chapter. The town questioned whether or not the deal was financially viable, noting that almost the entire models had been rent-stabilized with below-market rents. In filings, attorneys requested how the property’s earnings might cowl its debt prices.
These within the business had related questions. Investor curiosity in rent-stabilized portfolios plunged after the passage of Housing Stability and Tenant Safety Act of 2019, which made it not possible for landlords to considerably increase rents, even following a emptiness. The Federal Reserve’s charge hikes beginning in 2022 solely made issues worse. The asset class was deemed uninvestable, and the doomsday state of affairs spun out: Homeowners would now not pay for primary upkeep, properties would fall into the palms of vulture traders, the town’s housing inventory would additional erode and banks could be left on the hook with hundreds of thousands in dangerous loans.
“The whole lot could be performed with much less cash.”
Even usually level-headed advisors and think-tank fellows started to sound the alarm.
“Until we vastly improve the quantity of finances for sponsored housing, virtually all of it’s going to should go to rescuing these buildings,” Mark Willis of NYU’s Furman Middle for Actual Property and City Coverage mentioned in a presentation final April. He urged that an intervention is likely to be wanted to save lots of the buildings.
But Zohar Levy is neither a authorities intervention, an out-of-town speculator nor an optimist anticipating the state’s hire legislation to vary. Now in his late 50s, Levy made a fortune investing in Germany’s actual property market, and amid all of the noise, he believes the numbers merely pencil out.
“The basics of the portfolio present a gradual, albeit conservative, return on the funding,” a Summit spokesperson mentioned.
If he’s proper, the deal throws water on the fiery arguments of each tenant and landlord advocates.
The purchaser
Levy was born in Haifa, Israel, and studied accounting in school. He turned the CFO of Engel Assets, an actual property agency run by his father-in-law, billionaire Jacob Engel, who made one in every of his many fortunes constructing housing for post-Soviet immigrants to Israel within the early Nineteen Nineties.
Levy went out on his personal in about 2002. In his first deal, he purchased a struggling actual property firm in Israel, often called Chayel Holdings. He noticed a possibility to chop prices, restructure its debt and discover profitability.
“It began with an advert I noticed within the newspaper for the sale of Chayel Holdings,” Levy mentioned in an interview with the Israeli enterprise publication Globes in 2005.
Levy slashed administration prices at Chayel from 12 million shekels to 1.5 million shekels a 12 months, telling Globes that income-producing actual property corporations didn’t want so many bills equivalent to managers, cell telephones or engineers readily available.
“I found that all the pieces could be performed with much less cash,” he mentioned in Hebrew within the Globes interview. Collectively, press about Levy describes him as a personal particular person with an analytical thoughts.
He rebanded the agency as Summit and raised cash by issuing bonds in Israel’s capital markets.
(Lilah Burke/The Actual Deal)
In 2004, Levy noticed Germany as the subsequent frontier for undervalued belongings. On the time, Germany’s financial progress was stagnant. It was not a preferred vacation spot for worldwide traders. However Levy began buying grocery-anchored retail facilities and different business and residential properties.
Beginning in 2007, Summit’s German enterprise grew quickly. The corporate raised 300 million euros on the London Inventory Trade. It acquired Deutsche Actual Property AG, a publicly traded firm on the Frankfurt Inventory Trade.
Levy determined to maneuver out of the German market within the early 2020s. He unloaded most of Summit’s German portfolio, grossing over 1 billion euros and reinvested the cash into U.S. actual property. Summit created a U.S. subsidiary, which acquired stakes in 90 residential buildings with 3,100 models, two unspecified accommodations in New York Metropolis and 27 retail facilities and malls throughout the nation.
Levy’s work was not restricted to actual property. Summit took a 16 p.c stake in Paz, an Israeli power and retail firm, which he bought in July 2025 for 1.1 billion Israeli shekels, or $350 million. It was one of many largest offers in Tel Aviv Inventory Trade historical past, based on Globes.
Summit’s offers additionally embrace value-add alternatives with greater danger. In October 2025, Summit acquired the leasehold on 444 Madison Avenue, a 42-story Class B workplace tower for simply $42 million. The earlier proprietor, Westbrook, purchased the lease on the Nineteen Thirties-era workplace constructing for $314 million in 2007.
However Levy was nonetheless not a identified participant in New York Metropolis actual property. His acquisitions of rental buildings had been made by way of a restricted partnership. When The Actual Deal reached out to sources about Levy, few had heard of him.
Then got here the Pinnacle public sale.
The portfolio
In 1997, Pinnacle Group owned 267 residences in New York Metropolis, the New York Occasions reported. Joel Wiener slowly grew the enterprise to over 20,000 models, largely rent-stabilized, throughout Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx. He additionally transformed over a dozen of the rent-stabilized condo buildings into condominiums.
Over time, tenant teams accused Wiener and his firm Pinnacle of shoddy repairs and hire overcharges, particularly as demand ratcheted up for the gentrifying neighborhoods the place he owned.
Wiener was among the many first U.S. builders to promote bonds in Israel, offering him with over $500 million in low cost financing. By 2017, his portfolio was valued at $2 billion and Wiener himself was a billionaire, based on Bloomberg.
Issues began to go south for Pinnacle in 2019, after the state legislation restricted stabilized landlords from elevating rents after making enhancements. It additionally made it tougher for landlords to transform rent-stabilized buildings into condos.
In Could 2025, Pinnacle’s lender, Flagstar Financial institution, initiated a foreclosures on a $564 million mortgage tied to the 5,200-unit portfolio. To cease the foreclosures, Pinnacle put these properties out of business safety, valuing the portfolio at $826 million.
“We didn’t view it as a heavy raise.”
A month later, Levy met with Wiener and his associates, based on Globes. (Wiener has an Israeli subsidiary known as Zarasai Group.)
Summit was additionally searching for to make a take care of Pinnacle’s Israeli bondholders, Globes reported. The bonds, which had been buying and selling for junk standing, could be transformed to shares of a brand new actual property firm managed by Summit.
A Summit spokesperson mentioned the deal by no means materialized.
As a substitute, Summit determined to enter the contentious chapter course of for a a lot greater slice of Pinnacle’s portfolio. Eastdil Secured ran the advertising and marketing course of attracting 14 gives on the primary spherical of bidding and 7 certified gives within the second spherical. Summit was the stalking horse bidder.
PH Realty’s Peter Hungerford, whose agency has acquired 4,100 condo models, together with current purchases of stabilized inventory, mentioned he made a bid on the Pinnacle portfolio. After excursions, he discovered the situations to be “good general.”
“We didn’t view it as a heavy raise,” he mentioned.
However Summit was the profitable bidder after a multi-round course of, providing $451.3 million or $87,000 per unit.
Flagstar slashed its debt and provided Summit a $338.5 million mortgage for the acquisition at a sexy charge of 5.25 p.c. (Summit’s spokesperson mentioned the phrases of the mortgage had been a part of a negotiation. Flagstar didn’t return a request to remark.)
The plan
Summit had penciled the deal as a run-of-the-mill condo deal, with decrease debt prices that may enable the agency to extend money circulate, based on Summit. The agency expects to usher in $36 million in web working earnings yearly which quantities to a capitalization charge of about 8 p.c. (The cap charge, a metric exhibiting the property’s potential return, for New York Metropolis walk-up condo transactions in the course of the fourth quarter of 2025, averaged 7.46 p.c, based on Cushman & Wakefield.)
However the metropolis’s authorized crew appeared unwilling to just accept Summit’s numbers. In the course of the chapter course of, attorneys raised questions on Summit’s monetary capacity to remedy violations, historical past as a property proprietor and restricted expertise operating actual property in New York.
Summit responded, noting that solely 420 models, or 8 p.c of the portfolio, account for the entire violations. It mentioned it could spend $10 million within the first 12 months fixing violations and addressing upkeep wants with $3 million particularly on present violations. In 5 years, it could spend a complete of $30 million in capital enhancements.
The town’s shut involvement wasn’t a deterrent.
“It is a excessive profile take care of a variety of public consideration. It’s not shocking that the Metropolis took such an energetic position,” a Summit spokesperson mentioned. “We perceive the Metropolis’s concern and stay up for working with them to enhance the buildings.”
On Jan. 16, David Jones, the chapter court docket decide, approved the sale.
“Summit’s statements clarify its dedication to do what is required,” Jones mentioned. “The town’s strategy to this case offers me confidence that the town will monitor and police Summit’s efficiency.”
If Summit’s evaluation is to be believed, about 92 p.c of the portfolio is in good condition. Summit is budgeting solely $30 million, or $97 per unit monthly, to repairs. Within the huge image, that’s not very a lot. As a result of Mamdani has vowed to “freeze the hire” by appointing new representatives to the nine-member Lease Pointers Board, the owner received’t get annual will increase on the models if it has underestimated the work.
With no expectation of emptiness deregulate or substantial hire will increase, the numbers could also be harder to hit — the owner advocates and the town now each admit the bills are excessive and the earnings too low.
But when Levy, the accountant, has it proper, he could get again to an older approach of operating rent-stabilization buildings, the place house owners held property for lengthy durations of time, anticipating regular money circulate slightly than massive returns on future gross sales.
