Pinnacle Group has sold its interest in a 172-unit Upper West Side rental tower for $88 million, offloading the 15-story building at 323 West 96th Street to Lightstone Group in a deal that closed at a loss for the once-dominant New York landlord. The sale marks the second major transaction completed by Joel Wiener's real estate firm within a single week, as the company continues unwinding its holdings following a bankruptcy filing last year.
According to The Real Deal, Pinnacle Group entered contract to sell the building to Lightstone Group at the end of July, with the deal completed this week. Filings show Pinnacle received about $88 million for the property, which was built in 2001 and includes four rent-stabilized apartments among its 172 units. The sale contract covered both 100 percent of the leasehold on the building and Pinnacle's 50 percent stake in the underlying real estate, according to the same report.
The numbers behind the deal reveal just how far the property's value has fallen under Pinnacle's ownership. Per PincusCo, the transaction involved a dual conveyance: Lightstone, through an entity called LREP Acquisitions XIV LLC, bought the full ground leasehold from Pinnacle entity Hudson Park NY LLC and a 50 percent tenant-in-common fee interest from Beacon NY LLC, while co-owner Tarter Family Limited Partnership kept its remaining half of the fee interest.
A Building Bought High, Sold Low
Hudson Park NY purchased the leasehold in 2007 for $74 million, and Beacon NY, which operated the property, added a 50 percent stake in the underlying real estate for $27 million in 2016, according to filings cited by PincusCo. That put Pinnacle's total investment in the building at $101 million — roughly $13 million more than what it just collected in the sale, PincusCo's reporting shows, underscoring the losses even prime Manhattan rental assets can generate for a distressed owner.
The sale itself was steered by a process with international stakes. PincusCo reports the deal was run through a competitive bidding process managed by Eastdil Secured after bond trustee Mishmeret Trust Services Ltd. initiated a bondholder vote on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, with the transaction expected to net $23 million in cash for bondholders. The Real Deal notes that a Lightstone Group representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and a Pinnacle Group spokesperson declined to comment.
Second Big Sale in a Week
The Upper West Side deal followed closely on the heels of another major disposal. Just days earlier, on August 12, Pinnacle sold a condo portfolio for about $128 million, offloading 743 residential condo units and 36 commercial and parking properties across Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan to Tremada Holdings, an affiliate of London-based William Pears Group, as reported by Commercial Observer. Of that sum, $66 million went to pay off lender Axos Capital, according to the same account.
Together, the two deals illustrate a company in rapid retreat. Pinnacle Group was once a major player in New York's rent-stabilized building market, founded by Wiener in 1997 and grown into a roughly $2 billion portfolio of more than 10,000 apartments across four boroughs, structured under an offshore parent, British Virgin Islands-based Zarasai Group Ltd., according to ElevenFlo. Statewide legislation closed off the avenues to raising rents that Pinnacle's investment strategy had relied upon for years, a shift that helped push the company toward collapse.
Bankruptcy Fallout and a Landlord Branded a Slumlord
Pinnacle placed more than 5,000 mostly rent-stabilized apartment units into bankruptcy in 2025, and Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration branded the company a slumlord this year, per The Real Deal's reporting. The city tried unsuccessfully to stop the sale of Pinnacle's properties to Summit Properties, which had earlier been detailed in Hoodline's coverage of the city's delay bid and later in a report on the judge's approval of the sale. That rent-stabilized portfolio, sold for $451.3 million to Summit Properties USA, forced primary lender Flagstar Bank to absorb a loss exceeding $100 million on its $564 million mortgage debt, according to Multifamily Dive. Municipal data cited by Multifamily Dive found that immediately hazardous housing code violations across Pinnacle's bankrupt rent-stabilized buildings quadrupled between 2019 and 2024, twice the rate seen in comparable rent-stabilized properties citywide. That record led Summit to pledge $30 million over five years to cure more than 6,500 violations in order to win court approval for its purchase.
Tenants Organized, and Some Debt Got Forgiven
The building conditions that alarmed regulators also galvanized residents. The Union of Pinnacle Tenants, an organized network formed during the 2025 bankruptcy, secured a commitment from Summit Properties to forgive millions of dollars in back-rent arrears owed by residents who had withheld rent over unaddressed hazardous conditions, according to Bisnow.
The contrast between that fight and the smooth market-rate sale of 323 West 96th Street is notable. While Mamdani's administration and tenant organizers pushed hard against the bankruptcy sale of the 5,100-unit rent-stabilized portfolio, market-rate buildings like the Upper West Side tower — with just four rent-stabilized units out of 172 — have moved through commercial channels to private buyers like Lightstone without the same public battle, as The Real Deal's reporting on the deal makes clear.
A Market Reshaped by State Law
The broader numbers help explain why. Average per-unit sale prices for New York City residential buildings that are more than 75 percent rent-stabilized dropped 40 to 47 percent in 2025 compared with 2019 levels, according to data from Ariel Property Advisors cited by Northgate Real Estate, following restrictions enacted under the state's 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act. That legislative shift, combined with rising interest rates and thousands of unaddressed violations, has driven the steep devaluations, lender write-downs and asset liquidation now playing out at Pinnacle.
Lightstone Group, led by CEO David Lichtenstein, already holds a significant multifamily presence in the city, including the 430-unit 365 Bond Street development in Gowanus, which secured a $166 million refinance loan in early 2024, according to The Real Deal's earlier reporting. For Pinnacle, the sale is one more step toward satisfying debt obligations to lenders and Tel Aviv bondholders as the once-major New York landlord exits the market it helped shape for nearly three decades.
