The Wall Street, Kingston Building.
In April 2025, an eight-unit apartment building at 124 Wall Street in midtown Kingston went on the market. The seller's agent had a verbal offer in hand from a Westchester investor — six over ask, all cash, intent to renovate and re-rent at market within a year. Eight families were going to be displaced inside ninety days.
The building had two retired schoolteachers, a single mother of three working as a hospital phlebotomist, a bartender at the Senate Garage, two welders, and one of our own resident board members, Theo Vasquez's mother-in-law. Average rent across the eight units was $1,140 — about 40% below market for a comparable unit in Kingston in 2025. The investor's underwriting model required pushing every rent to $2,200 within 18 months.
"We had eleven days to put together a $1.84M offer. We had $612,000 in the bank."
The building was off-market by April 28. Your Business acquired 124 Wall Street for $1.84M, all cash, on April 27, 2025. The acquisition was funded by an emergency loan from the Hudson Valley Credit Union, two foundation bridge grants (Holcombe and the Reed Trust), and the largest single individual gift in our history (anonymous, $400K).
Every existing tenant's lease was renewed within thirty days, at the same rent, with a permanent affordability covenant attached. Rent increases on the building are now capped at the regional CPI in perpetuity. The two welders bought us a case of bourbon. The phlebotomist's son started kindergarten at George Washington Elementary in September.
The building's eight units join 47 others in our rent-trust portfolio. None of these units will ever be lost to investor flipping. That is what permanence means in concrete terms — a hospital phlebotomist's child stays in their school district; a 71-year-old retired teacher does not move to Florida; a midtown Kingston block does not lose another forty percent of its long-term residents inside a decade.
— Reported by Eleanor Mossberg · Photo by Renée Diallo · April 2026