New York Buildings sold
TIAA-CREF purchased the 280,000-square-foot office building 475 Fifth Avenue from Barclays Capital Real Estate for $144 million or about $514 per square foot. A joint venture of real estate developer Joseph Moinian and Westbrook Capital acquired 475 Fifth Avenue, located at 41st Street, in 2007 for $160 million, but lender Barclays took the property back in 2009 through a deed in lieu of foreclosure.Stonehenge Partners has closed on the 93-unit apartment building at 1143 Second Avenue and 60th Street. Stonehenge paid KFJ Realty $47 million for the six-story building, which includes 15,000 square feet of retail on the westerly block between 60th and 61st streets, and 77,000 square feet of development rights. It is still not clear whether Stonehenge will build at the site or simply hold on to the development rights for future construction.
A vacant recording studio at 509 West 38th Street has been sold for $20.5 million, Prime Property Fund, an entity related to Morgan Stanley Real Estate Advisors, sold the four-story, 42,800-square-foot property at 509 West 38th Street to ELB Holdings LLC, an entity controlled by principal Eric Birnbaum. The building, located between 10th and 11th Avenues near the Hudson Yards, previously housed Legacy Recording Studios.
HSBC Alternative Investments and Edge Fund Advisors said that they have bought out the remaining 51 percent stake in the Bertelsmann building at 1540 Broadway, in an off-market transaction. The partners bought 49 percent of the building from CB Richard Ellis in November 2010, in a deal valued at $254 million, or $575 per square foot. CBRE had previously acquired the property in a fire sale from Macklowe Properties.
Equity Residential firm just grabbed an Upper West Side development site for $76.5 million. The firm picked up a 99-year leasehold on the 20,700-square-foot site at 170 Amsterdam Avenue between 66th and 67th streets with intentions to build a new structure with 230 apartments and 8,500 square feet of retail. The site has just under 239,000 square feet of development rights and more than 200 feet of frontage along Amsterdam Avenue.
Vornado Realty Trust went into contract to buy an Upper East Side rental building for $170 million. The 11-story, 41-unit apartment building at 11 East 68th Street, with two rental units along Madison Avenue.
Real estate investment trust American Realty Capital New York Recovery REIT went to contract on two New York City properties for $36.5 million. The first acquisition is a portfolio of four retail condominiums at the base of One Jackson Square, the 30-unit luxury condo at 122 Greenwich Avenue at the intersection of Eighth Avenue. Two of the units are leased to a TD Bank, one to a Starbucks and the final space is vacant. In total they comprise 7,080 square feet of rentable space. The acquisition is expected to close in November.
Real estate private equity and management fund Savanna has taken title to 80 Broad St., the 36-story, 417,000-square-foot office tower previously owned by Swig Equities, which will continue to manage the property.Savanna also closed on a $65.3 million loan from Mesa West Capital, which will be used to finance the acquisition and to pay for a planned, $23-million capital-improvements program.
RXR Realty will take control of 620 Sixth Avenue from a partnership of Joseph Chetrit, Yair Levy and Charles Dayan in a deal that values the building at about $500 million. The partnership paid $290 million for it in late 2005, and will retain a minority stake. The seven-story, 700,000-square-foot, 114-year-old building at 19th Street is 80 percent occupied and home to big-box retailers TJ Maxx and Bed Bath & Beyond. RXR CEO Scott Rechler said the building will generate enough income to cover debt payments beginning next year.
Hotelier Andre Balazs has officially taken over the Cooper Square Hotel,. But buyers, Westport Capital Partners, put the 21-story East Village hotel, off of Cooper Square between East 5th and 6th streets, on the market]
Highgate Hotels, Crown Acquisitions and the Carlyle Group have bought 170 Broadway between Liberty Street and Maiden Lande for more than $100 million. They plan to to turn the 108 year old, 18-story office building, into a hotel. Lower Manhattan has had significant hotel growth recently, with at least seven other hotels currently in development in the area. Tourism continues to be strong, although room and occupancy rates are still down from their highs in 2008. This project marks the first time the three firms are working together.
SL Green Realty and Jeff Sutton, president of Wharton Properties, paying more than $400 million for a 10-building portfolio that includes prime retail on Fifth and Madison avenues. The investment pair will take control of 724 Fifth Avenue, which has a Prada store at its base, and the building at 760 Madison Avenue, which includes an Armani store.
Colorado-based UDR has closed on its acquisition of the 507-unit rental building at 95 Wall Street for $325 million a 22-story Financial District building, formerly known as Dwell95, from the Moinian Group, which converted it to luxury rentals after it previously served as JPMorgan's headquarters. The transaction comes out to about $550,000 per unit, excluding the 97-space parking garage and 7,526-square-foot ground-floor retail space. The apartments are 93 percent occupied, according to UDR, and rent for an average of $3,100 per month.
NYC Buildings For Sale
SL Green Realty is putting its leasehold on 711 Third Avenue, and a 50 percent interest in the underlying ground, on the market. The 580,000-square-foot building, between East 44th and East 45th streets may command -- between $200 million and $225 million, -- because of its proximity to Grand Central.A 12,260-square-foot lot near Herald Square is on the market with an asking price of $42.75 million A triangle-shaped lot, is a combination of a four-story commercial building at 1227 Broadway and a parking lot and one-story building at 846-850 Sixth Avenue, comprises the entire nearly 290-foot-long south side of 30th Street between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, along with more than 68 feet of frontage along Sixth Avenue and more than 15 feet of frontage along Broadway. About 5,060 square feet of the eastern portion of the lot lies in a zoning district that allows for an office, hotel, manufacturing or community facility use with a floor area ratio of 10,
A new two-full floor penthouse at Jean Novel's Chelsea Nouvel tower at 100 Eleventh Avenue has come on the market for a jaw-dropping $39 million. The 14-room, 9,493-square-foot unit, offers panoramic views of the city skyline via 14-foot, floor-to-ceiling windows and terraces, the listing says, and features eight bedrooms, seven bathrooms, as well as dens, study, dining rooms, living rooms and custom gourmet kitchens.
Five more properties from the Jehovah's Witnesses in Brooklyn are going on the market,. The five Brooklyn Heights properties have a combined asking price of $18.8 million and belong to the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, the legal and publishing entity of the Jehovah's Witnesses. One of the houses is a carriage house built in the late 1800s on Columbia Heights, and is currently configured as two apartments with a four-car garage. It has an asking price of $4.5 million.
Two Trump Place development sites, one on the southwest corner of 61st Street and West End Avenue and the other at the northwest corner of 59th Street and West End Avenue, are on the market, by a joint venture between the Carlyle Group and Extell Development. The sites could fetch a combined price of upwards of $400 million. Together the parcels have approval for up to 1,200 apartments and are currently in use as parking lots.
Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs' RFR Holding is marketing a development site between West 44th and West 43rd streets, which could build 355,000 square feet. The site on which there are currently three buildings, could command $500 per buildable square foot, going by a recent $400-a-square-foot asking price of a nearby site: a 12,000-square-foot plot at 20 West 40th Street, across from Bryant Park. site. Meanwhile, RFR is still trying to sell a 59 percent stake in the Seagram building at 375 Park Avenue.
Steve Witkoff's Witkoff Group has completed its purchase of part of the former International Toy Center building from Lehman Brothers Holdings for $191 million. Witkoff is planning a $290 million condominium conversion of the property, at 1107 Broadway, featuring 145 units, in collaboration with a Morgan Stanley real estate fund.
A six-story story building at 33 Ninth Avenue, is for now for sale. The building is owned by 2935 Equities. The property includes the Soho House private club.
The Blackstone Group, Brookfield Asset Management, Equity Residential and AvalonBay Communities have all submitted bids for real estate investment trust Archstone in recent weeks, but the offers haven't been enough to resolve a disagreement among the owners over how to unwind Archstone. Barclays is pushing to sell the company or its assets privately whereas Lehman favors a longer-term approach: taking the company public in what would be the largest real estate initial public offering ever.
