Once and future Boston apartment king returns

Well, he never left.

To those of us who have lived in Massachusetts our entire lives, the name Harold Brown is well known. He is a Boston businessman who owns multiple apartment rental properties through his Hamilton Company.

His name was synonymous (to some) with “slum lord” or “crook” in the 1980’s when it was discovered that he had paid off a Boston city official in order to get a building permit (the Globe and Herald covered it, extensively).

Well, after pleading guilty to the charge and a bout with bankruptcy in the early 1990’s, he’s back in the real estate race.

According to the Wall Street Journal:

In one of the largest U.S. apartment acquisitions this year, Mr. Brown has paid about $129.5 million for a suburban Boston apartment complex.

The property is the Dexter Park apartments in Brookline.

Mr. Brown estimates Dexter Park, which is 94%-occupied and gets average monthly rents of about $2,700, would have fetched as much as $150 million two years ago. The property produces a cash flow before debt service of $8.2 million. With annual debt service of about $5 million, that leaves a leveraged return on equity of about 8%.

Not bad for an 84-year old.

Image courtesy The Hamilton Company

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