Ben Shaoul

Overview

Ben Shaoul is a New York City-based real estate owner and developer, serving as the president of Magnum Real Estate Group, a residential real estate development and management company headquartered in New York City. He is best known as a prominent developer in the Manhattan borough of New York City. Shaoul has acquired and sold over 100 properties, including the renovation of thousands of apartments and a $500 million condominium conversion. As of 2014, he owned over forty buildings in the East Village. In 2013, Shaoul and Magnum Real Estate Group opened Bloom62, a luxury apartment building located in the East Village. Shaoul and Westbrook Partners sold a jointly held investment portfolio of 17 properties for $130 million to Jared Kushner in February of that year. He later partnered with SL Green Realty to acquire properties in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Shaoul also began developing a dormitory for the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan and ventured into Tribeca, where he purchased the top 22 floors of the 32-story art-deco Verizon Building for conversion to condominiums. In July 2014, he purchased the 199-unit Post Toscana on the Upper East Side and the 138-unit Post Luminaria in Kips Bay for $270 million to convert into condominiums. Both buildings had soon-to-expire tax abatements thereafter exempting them from rent stabilization rules. Shaoul is married to Megan Walsh Shaoul. They have three children: Henry, Piper, and Mayer. He has been criticized for contributing to the decline of rent-regulated apartments in the East Village. He was labeled "Sledgehammer Shaoul" after confronting tenants in a building he purchased and being photographed with construction workers holding sledgehammers and crowbars. In 2014, he was sued by his parents for using the proceeds from the refinancing of co-owned assets to fund his development projects. The dispute was later resolved.