B6's Tom Donovan, Eugene Kim, Tommy Lin and Robert Rappa are marketing the property. In September, Massey Knakal alumnus Donovan joined the brokerage firm as a principal and vice chair. The three other brokers on the deal came from Donovan's team at Cushman & Wakefield. When joining B6, Donovan told GlobeSt.com that 20 years ago Massey Knakal hired him to focus on Queens. That has been his niche throughout his career and he has continued with Queens as his bailiwick of expertise.

“The borough of Queens and the Rego Park neighborhood, in particular, have continued to see substantial growth and investor interest in multifamily portfolios such as the Rego Park 18 portfolio remain strong,” says Donovan. “This rare listing to come to market has been owned and meticulously maintained by the same family for over three quarters of a century making this portfolio a valuable, long-term investment.”

B6 notes that the property has no open violations issued by the Department of Buildings. The brokers assert this reflects a high level of maintenance and care, especially considering the development's size and age. Queens has long enjoyed a residential reputation. Interest in the neighborhood continues to grow. For example, in September, Blackstone closed on its $500 million acquisition of Parker Towers in Forest Hills and in June A&E Real Estate Holdings purchased a $127.5 million six-asset Queens portfolio with five buildings in Flushing and one in Elmhurst.

A Compass 2018 New York City multifamily sales report compared the Q4 and Q3 numbers in Queens: In Q3, Compass recorded $97,586,428 in dollar volume, which jumped in Q4 to $837,565,000. This reflected a 758% increase in dollar volume. The total transaction volume in Q3 was 15 and rose to 16 in Q4. Building volume increased from 21 to 24, and sale of total units increased from 428 to 2,018.

In November 2018, Amazon had announced it selected Queens as one of its second headquarters but rescinded those plans on February 14. How that affected the borough's multifamily market may be reflected more looking at Q1 2019 figures and those that follow to track trends. As another wrinkle, Crain's reported the Rego Park apartments are rent-regulated.

But with a strong economy, the prospect of the Queens multifamily market remains optimistic. The borough was on an upward trajectory well before Amazon's Long Island City sound and fury. On Tuesday, Nuveen announced launching a multifamily fund with a focus on millennials and middle-income renters. It plans to acquire “well-located properties with high, stable occupancy levels in top-tier cities and growth markets across the US.”

Cushman & Wakefield's Doug Harmon had pointed to the continued increasing interest of institutional capital in investing in multifamily in an October 2018 GlobeSt.com Q&A. Back in 2015, Blackstone and Ivanhoe Cambridge paid $5.45 billion for the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village which included affordable housing. And the Nuveen fund does not point to an ebb in the capital flow.