Floyd Mayweather Jr buying $402M Black Spruce portfolio
Floyd Mayweather is stepping into Manhattan’s multifamily ring in a big way.
The retired boxer has gone into contract to pay $402 million for a 1,000-unit affordable housing portfolio of more than 60 buildings, according to sources familiar with the deal.
Josh Gotlib of Black Spruce Management is the seller. Black Spruce declined to comment.
The multifamily deal for properties concentrated in Upper Manhattan would be one of the city’s biggest this year. A slice of the portfolio closed Wednesday, sources said. The remainder is expected to close in the fourth quarter or early 2025.
This year, only Michael Stern’s $672 million transfer of 9 Dekalb Avenue to lender Silverstein Capital Partners had a larger purchase price, but that deal was a distressed transaction.
Some of the Black Spruce portfolio has received Article XI, a tax exemption of up to 40 years for projects that are at least two-thirds affordable.
Black Spruce, in 2021, was working to recapitalize an 1,800-unit Article XI deal by selling a stake in the 97 buildings, also concentrated in Upper Manhattan and comprising six portfolios. The firm aimed to sell a 49.9 percent stake that would value the deal at $700 million.
For the Michigan-born Mayweather, the investment in affordable housing is a venture close to his heart.
“This purchase holds deep emotional significance for me and my family,” the celebrity athlete said in a statement. Mayweather has previously said he lived “seven deep” in a one-bedroom in New Brunswick, New Jersey, as a child.
“When people see what I have now, they have no idea of where I came from and how I didn’t have anything growing up,” he told Mercury News in 2007.
Mayweather has previously waded into New York real estate. The 15-time world champion has invested in nine skyscrapers alongside office giant SL Green, he said on a podcast in 2022, and is part of SL Green’s casino bid in Times Square.
In the years following the pandemic, Black Spruce amassed a 4,000-unit portfolio, becoming one of the city’s largest rental landlords.
The investor partnered with Meyer Orbach on a $1.8 billion deal for 1,766 units spanning six rental buildings, and on the acquisition of the American Copper Buildings — twin luxury towers in Murray Hill with views of the East River.
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