CHERRY HILL, NJ—Persistence led local commercial broker Jason Starkman to the successful closing of an unusual “fractured” ownership sale in a Cherry Hill condominium property, the Sussex House Condominiums, a 77-unit condo building on Kings Highway. The new owner, Sela Properties, also has properties in Merchantville and Blackwood, NJ.  The $4.2 million transaction included assumption of an existing $3.5 million loan with Wells Fargo, Starkman says.

The seller in the transaction, AIG Global Real Estate, owned 59 of the units, which it acquired from the Kushner Companies in 2007, when Kushner unloaded 16,000 units to a joint venture of AIG and Morgan Properties. The two firms parted ways a few years later, and AIG ended up owning the portfolio of condos.

“They were interested in selling that package of condominium units. I had approached them about a year ago to see if they would be interested in doing an off-market transaction,” says Starkman, managing member of Starkman Realty Group, in an exclusive interview with GlobeSt.com. “I had the right key for the right hole, and we started moving it along.”

The remaining units are individually owned, says Starkman. “This is a little different from your typical apartment building. There's a condominium association.” The new owner will fill three of five seats on the condo board, he says.

Sela will handle maintenance on the property, and its goal after “they stabilize the building over the next 3-6 months,” is to approach the owners of the other properties and attempt to acquire the remaining units. .

The building would then be converted to apartment rentals, Starkman says, because it wouldn't make any financial sense to try to market the units as condominiums, given the current market pricing of the units.

You can hear the complete interview with Jason Starkman in the player below.