YouTube personality buys Fort Myers apartment complex

The Cobblestone on The Lake Apartments in Fort Myers have sold to St. Petersburg investor and Youtube star Ben Mallah of Equity Management Partners, the second deal in Southwest Florida he’s been tied to in the past few weeks.

The most recent deal is the off-market purchase of the 248-unit community at 4400 Cortina Circle between Colonial Boulevard and Winkler Avenues. It sold for $43 million.

The community is made up of both apartments and townhouses, and the purchase includes a two-building shell structure that can accommodate up to 42 additional townhomes or residential units, says Miami-based GLT Group Brokerage, which announced the sale and identified Mallah as the buyer.

The firm’s managing director and lead broker Sean Shahar A. Ziv represented the seller, a New York investor, and found the buyer.

The brash and flashy Mallah is well known for his popular YouTube videos offering real estate advice and personal stories. In just the past couple of months he’s posted one video on how to analyze a multifamily deal and another on shopping for a Rolls-Royce. He has more than 1.1 million subscribers.

But aside from over-the-top online persona, Mallah is an active commercial real estate investor that, according to his website, has built a $500 million portfolio in the past three decades.

According to the site, “his first investment property was a crack house in Oakland, California, over 35 years ago.”

The other Southwest Florida deal, for a Fort Myers office building, was announced in late May by LSI Cos.

The 60,305-square-foot building at 3650 Colonial Court sold for $17.25 million to an LLC with ties to Equity Management. (The state’s Division of Corporations database shows the LLC and Equity Management share an address. Equity’s manager, according to the database, is Mallah.)

The building was previously owned by Colonial Interstate Investments.

According to Lee County property records, Colonial paid $1.3 million for it in 2004. 

LSI’s Justin Thibaut and Hunter Ward represented the seller. The buyer was represented by Ari Ravi of Ripco Real Estate.