Real Estate

Defunct REIT Dixon Advisory Selling Off Brooklyn buildings

16 May 2025

A fully-renovated Park Slope townhouse traded this week for $7.9 million, another seven-figure sale for the well-to-do Brooklyn neighborhood.

The seller was an entity tied to Dixon Advisory, an Australian property fund that bought up hundreds of one- to four-family homes in the greater New York area more than a decade ago. Now Dixon has been quietly unloading dozens of those properties after the publicly traded REIT collapsed in 2022.

The now-defunct fund has sold off 27 properties over the past year, most of them concentrated in brownstone Brooklyn, according to property records. After amassing a $1.4 billion property empire in Brooklyn and New Jersey, Dixon started the selloff in 2018 and dumped about three dozen properties over the next five years.

The liquidation accelerated last year, when an Australian court approved a $16 million Australian dollar (about $10.3 million USD) class action settlement against the already-defunct fund, according to a news report. The court found that Dixon improperly advised about 4,600 middle-class investors in its publicly traded US Masters Residential Property Fund, according to the Australian digital media site Region.

Dixon, led by CEO Alan Dixon, snapped up hundreds of one- to four-unit properties in the early 2010s, renting them out at premium prices after renovations. It also donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to local political causes in Jersey City and cozied up to Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop.

But the fund allegedly spent $360 million Australian dollars (around $256 million USD) on renovations and accumulated $670 million Australian dollars (about $476 million USD) of debt, wasting away the life savings of Aussie public servants, doctors and lawyers, according to a 2019 report in the Australian Financial Review. Its share price plummeted, leading US Masters to begin liquidating its portfolio. After Dixon fell apart, it agreed to unload the rest of its properties in 2023.

It appears to be working its way through its vast New York and New Jersey portfolio, building by building, often selling for a healthy profit. Dixon bought the Park Slope townhouse at 98 Sixth Avenue for $3.3 million in 2013 before closing on the property this week at a 140 percent rate of return.

It is unclear who will benefit from the sale proceeds or who is in charge of the liquidation. The Brown Harris Stevens listing broker did not respond to requests for comment, and no one answered at the number on Dixon’s leasing website.