A&E Real Estate Snags Queens Residential Complex for $130M

A&E Real Estate has acquired Cunningham Heights in Queens Village, adding 22 three-story buildings containing 1,056 rental apartments to its portfolio, the firm announced Monday.

The Cunningham Heights development at 206-09 86th Road was purchased from Benjamin Companies for $130 million, or $123,106 per unit, at a cap rate of 5.6 percent, according to city records and A&E.

A loan of an undisclosed amount for the acquisition was provided by Signature Bank, which had a team of Joseph Fingerman and Elizabeth Arato that arranged the deal. Jack Bick of Charatan Realty represented the buyer and the seller in the transaction and did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

This marks the fifth addition to A&E’s residential portfolio in as many months, with four of them being in Queens. The other properties snagged by the real estate investment trust in recent months were 92-40 Queens Boulevard in Rego Park that closed in January, as well as Georgian Hall and Ravenna Court, located at 35-64 84th Street and 80-01 37th Avenue, respectively, in Jackson Heights, which closed in October 2021. A&E finalized the purchase of 400 East 57th Street, a 19-story, 263-unit apartment building in Midtown East, also in October.

“From luxury buildings south of 96th Street to workforce housing communities throughout the five boroughs, New York’s residential neighborhoods have consistently proven to be popular, durable and resilient,” A&E co- Founder Douglas Eisenberg said in a statement. “As was the case with Cunningham Heights, we continue to field a wide range of multifamily investment opportunities that, despite their very strong fundamentals, are not attracting nearly the same level of interest among institutional investors that we saw pre-pandemic.”