“I felt in a lot of ways proud of what we forced to happen,” said Zara Cadoux, a Brooklyn renter and leader in the citywide Union of Pinnacle Tenants. “I think the sale will be approved, but what I hope is that the judge does put some additional orders that provide assurances for repairs.”

The potential conditions on the sale could mark a partial victory for Mamdani, who vowed on his first day in office to improve life for renters in the buildings. Tenants who had been organizing across dozens of buildings owned by the company Pinnacle Group said they were optimistic after the hearing adjourned late in the evening.

In a somewhat unusual move, the bank financing the deal offered to extend a $3 million line of credit to fund repairs in deteriorating apartments. By the end of the day, lawyers for Summit Properties USA, the company planning to purchase the 93-building portfolio from a bankrupt owner, were negotiating with the city and tenants around a binding timeline and specific cash commitment to address thousands of housing code violations.

What might have been a routine hearing to confirm a real estate sale morphed into a nearly nine-hour marathon Thursday as attorneys for tenants and Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration attempted to win financial guarantees from the international real estate firm set to purchase more than 5,100 rent-stabilized New York City apartments.

Summit spokesperson Jordan Barowitz said the company “has the capacity and the commitment to preserve, restore and improve the 5,151 units and the lives of residents.”

The hearing marked the latest twist in a saga affecting thousands of households in four boroughs after many of their apartments fell into disrepair under Pinnacle’s ownership. The company filed for bankruptcy last May, claiming it lacked the revenue to pay its debts and keep up with maintenance with rents capped. Summit in late December lined up a bid for the mostly rent-stabilized apartments, where tenants have contended with crumbling ceilings, vermin and chronic heat problems.

At a previous hearing, federal bankruptcy Judge David Jones rejected the Mamdani administration's earlier attempts to delay the sale so that the city and tenant union could look for another buyer. Jones on Thursday suggested he would confirm the sale with conditions providing “adequate assurance” that Summit will address the outstanding maintenance problems. He said he would issue a ruling Friday afternoon.

“I want to assure people that I'm very aware that there's humans who inhabit these 5,000 units, and each with particular needs and situations,” Jones said.

Attorneys for Pinnacle and Summit criticized the attempt to impose conditions, arguing the bankruptcy process was about maximizing returns for creditors and not the appropriate venue for addressing apartment conditions.

“This is federal bankruptcy court, not municipal housing court,” Pinnacle attorney Garrett Fail said in court.

But city attorney Zachary Kass said the sale of such a large portfolio of regulated apartments with thousands of open violations was not a “plain-vanilla” deal and required more negotiation and detailed financial planning.

The potential purchaser, Summit, had to show it could “walk the walk as well as talk the talk” when it comes to resolving the violations and continuing to keep up with capital expenses, Kass said.

Tenants say they worry Summit will replicate the same practices of neglect, given its own track record of racking up housing code violations and neglecting building maintenance in its existing portfolio of buildings. Those conditions were detailed in a recent court filing by New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office.

Summit partnered with the firms Chestnut Holdings and Denali Management, both owned by the same person, Jonathan Wiener, to purchase and operate those buildings. Executives from Chestnut and Denali have appeared on the city’s annual "worst landlords" list as recently as last year. City and state officials have questioned the ties between Wiener and his brother Joel Wiener, the head of Pinnacle.

Summit Chairman Zohar Levy, testifying remotely from Austria, said Chestnut, Denali and Jonathan Wiener are not involved in the Pinnacle deal and will not manage the buildings.

In a court filing and testimony Thursday, Levy described his “long-term vision” for investing in the properties and pledged $30 million for repairs and capital improvements over the next five years.

Under his “immediate action plan,” Levy said Summit would resolve half of the roughly 6,500 housing code violations in the buildings within "approximately" two months, with priority given to the most hazardous violations, vermin infestations and problems in building common areas.

Pinnacle failed to pay its electric bill in at least two of the buildings, prompting Con Edison to cut the power in lobbies and hallways.

Levy said Summit would fix the remaining problems within six months, and that nearly all of the violations are concentrated in 420 apartments. Levy said in court that resolving those violations will cost a total of $3 million.

He also said his company would hire two new management companies to handle problems in the buildings, with one running Brooklyn properties and the other running buildings in three other boroughs. In court, he identified one of those firms as REM Management and said he had not yet hired the other.

But attorneys for the city and tenant group challenged Levy’s accounting and said he did not provide any documentation backing up the building and financial assessments, including the $30 million long-term capital plan or the $3 million estimate for immediately addressing violations.

Levy said Summit’s analysis of building needs was based on sales materials provided by Pinnacle, as well as assessments done by a team of Summit employees.

“This is an estimate, it’s not a cap,” Levy said of the capital plan. “We will meet all requirements as a landlord.”

Lawyers for the tenants and the city demanded legally binding guarantees to ensure taxpayers wouldn’t have to foot the bill for future repairs.

“The city's interest going forward is whether we're going to have to spend more money for emergency repairs because of the new owner's failure to make them,” said Steven Banks, Mamdani’s nominee to lead the city’s Law Department. “Whether we're going to have to pay for emergency shelter for people who will lose their homes because of conditions of disrepair.”

Tenants told Gothamist they just want to live in safer apartments.

“At the end of the day, we all just want the violations fixed,” said Matt Talubas, a tenant at a Pinnacle building in northern Manhattan. “I’m leaving here marginally more hopeful than when I came in.”