Gaia Real Estate a new multimillion dollar investment company and private equity fund, has acquired Vision Group Management, an eight-year old company and provider of management solutions for individual condominium owners in the metropolitan area. Both companies are based in New York.

Vision will serve as in-house manager of multifamily properties and condominium units acquired by Gaia. Vision’s responsibilities will include all day-to-day property management aspect of the properties, including- rentals, tenant relationship, collections, maintenance and building improvements.

At the same time Vision will continue to operate its own condominium management business which has over 300 investors worldwide and over $100-million in assets under management, including corporate housing units throughout Manhattan, and apartments at Parkchester in the Bronx, Greenpoint Lofts in Brooklyn, and the Journal Square area of Jersey City.

Amir Yerushalmi, Vision’s president and co-founder, is co-founder and managing partner of Gaia. Ben Friedman, Vision’s other co-founder, will be joining Gaia as a partner and has been named CEO of Gaia’s new Vision division. Friedman has 14 years of property management experience and served as Vision’s COO for the last eight years.

Gaia Real Estate was formed in early 2009 by three partners, Amir Yerushalmi, Danny Fishman, formerly co-CEO of the Tamir Fishman Group, a $6-billion Israel –based investment bank and asset manager and Ken Woolley, formerly CEO of Extra Space Storage, the second largest operator of self-storage facilities in the U.S.
Woolley is also the founder of WestCorp Management Group, one of the largest apartment property managers in the U.S.

Gaia invests in distressed multifamily properties and bulk purchases of condo units, managing, repositioning and disposing of the properties for the benefit of its investors. Gaia expects to sign a contract on a 50 unit building on the Upper West Side as well as a 98 unit building in Harlem. The company is also negotiating a $48-million project in Chelsea and several acquisitions in New Jersey and Connecticut.

In addition to the Vision acquisition, Gaia recently co-founded Park River Properties, a New York brokerage company which organizes international buyers into purchase groups for new development condominium units. The company already completed two bulk deals in the city and is negotiating several others. Gaia’s Vision division will manage the Park River units on behalf of the individual buyers.