H. Verby sells 1.6 acres on Jamaica Ave, Queens, for $16.5M
H. Verby Holding sold two Jamaica Avenue lots, 70,690 sq ft of land, to 186 Jamaica Ave Owner LLC for $16.5M, about $233 per land sq ft.
H. Verby Holding Co., Inc., which has owned two Jamaica Avenue lots in Queens since 1981, sold them to 186 Jamaica Ave Owner LLC for $16,500,000. The deed is dated September 24, 2026 and was recorded October 5, per the City Register.
Why it matters
This is a large-site trade in an M2-3A manufacturing district, not a retail-corridor storefront sale. City planning data lists 186-14 Jamaica Avenue as a one-story, 23,000 sq ft building from 1959 on 32,365 sq ft of land, and 186-20 Jamaica Avenue as a vacant 38,325 sq ft lot. Together that is about 1.6 acres.
For a developer or broker, the buyer paid for dirt more than for the building: only about a third of the land carries any structure, and the built floor area on lot 119 is 0.71 times the lot, against a commercial maximum of 4.0 that PLUTO lists for the district.
The numbers
At $16.5 million across 70,690 sq ft of land, the price is roughly $233 per land sq ft. Measured against the 23,000 sq ft of existing building alone it would be about $717 per sq ft, but that is not a useful figure because most of the value sits in the unbuilt lot.
The seller’s chain is long. Ideal Toy Corp deeded the property to H Verby Holding Co Inc on June 26, 1981, per the 1981 deed. The index shows no consideration for that deed, so the purchase price cannot be compared. The record does show a $1,000,000 mortgage to Chase Manhattan Bank recorded December 30, 1986, and two satisfactions recorded in 1991 and 1998.
The buyer is a single-purpose LLC. The deed does not name a principal, and we have not matched it to a known developer.
What’s next
We found no DOB NOW job filings on either lot, searched by tax lot and by address, so the buyer has not publicly said what it plans to build or whether it will reuse the existing warehouse. A new owner of a site this size would typically need a filing before any construction, and we will report one when it appears. Watch for a mortgage recording against the two lots, which would show who financed the purchase.
For another outer-borough land trade today, see the Staten Island industrial sale, or browse our New York coverage.
On the record
What we checked ourselves, and where you can check it too.
- Public recordThe seller took title to the site from Ideal Toy Corp in a deed dated June 26, 1981 and sold it on September 24, 2026, a 45-year hold. The 1981 deed is indexed at $0, so the original price is not on the record.View the record on a836-acris.nyc.gov
- Public recordThe two lots total 70,690 sq ft of land (32,365 plus 38,325) in an M2-3A district; only lot 119 is built, a one-story 23,000 sq ft building from 1959, so the $16.5M works out to about $233 per land sq ft.View the record on zola.planning.nyc.gov
On the record
- Primary recordNYC Department of Finance, ACRISDeed, H. Verby Holding Co., Inc. to 186 Jamaica Ave Owner LLC, $16,500,000, recorded 2026-10-05
- Primary recordNYC Department of Finance, ACRISDeed, Ideal Toy Corp to H Verby Holding Co Inc, June 26, 1981
- Primary recordNYC Department of City Planning, PLUTOPLUTO tax lot record, 186-14 Jamaica Avenue, block 10352 lot 119