Investment Sales

From the Post today:

A partnership of Kirk Kerkorian's MGM Mirage and investment company Dubai World has held discussions about buying the Drake Hotel site from developer Harry Macklowe...

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The number of apartment buildings sold in Manhattan above 96th Street in the second half of 2007 dropped 29.5 percent from the first half of the year, according to a new report. The report, prepared by appraisal firm Miller Cicero for investment-sales brokerage Massey Knakal, shows also that the number of walk-up and elevator apartment buildings in Upper Manhattan fell by 30.8 percent from the first half of 2007.

Apartment building sales also dropped in Manhattan below 96th Street. Sales of walk-ups were down almost 50 percent from the first half of 2007. Sales of elevator buildings, however, increased 13.5 percent.

Sales of apartment buildings borough-wide fell 27.5 percent from the first half of 2007 through the second.  read more »

It’s a sign of the times: Japanese firm Hiro North American Properties’ sale of the office tower at 650 Madison Avenue has closed, and, at $680 million, it’s the biggest building sale of 2008 so far (and the only over $400 million). Wasn’t too long ago—10 months, give or take—that $680 million for a Midtown building was ho-hum.

Not anymore. In the fourth month of 2008, $680 million is the new $1 billion. It’s a deal to be picked apart. So let’s do so.  read more »

Eastdil Secured has been hired to market Harry Macklowe's 1.765 million-square-foot office tower at 1301 Avenue of the Americas, according to the Post. The tower could set a single-building sales record, even in this cooling investment sales climate.

If it gets anywhere over $1,000 a square foot--eminently possible for a top-shelf Midtown building--1301 Avenue of the Americas could sell for at least $1.765 billion, which would put it just a shade below the all-time building record of $1.8 billion, which belongs to 666 Fifth Avenue and its owner, Kushner Companies.  read more »

Real estate investor Eyal Ofer has closed on his $525 million purchase of 120 Park Avenue from tobacco giant Philip Morris' parent company, Altria. The Observer reported on the deal in November. Altria is moving its headquarters to Richmond, Va., leaving much of the 643,000-square-foot building up for lease.

Also, it should be noted: The closed deal represents one of the largest investment-sales transactions of 2008 so far.  read more »

Robert Knakal, the chairman of investment-sales brokerage Massey Knakal, wrote in his March "Message from the Chairman" that the volume of property and property-portfolio sales in New York will drop "approximately 20% in 2008."

Why?

"... 2007 will be remembered as the year we started to pay for the Fed keeping interest rates too low for too long."  read more »

I wrote in this week's print edition of The Observer on whether 2008 would be as strong a year as 2007 for investment sales. Long story short: Not likely, because of the credit crunch. Also, 2007 set a remarkable benchmark, one perhaps best-illustrated by investment sales in Lower Manhattan.  read more »

Bloomberg News is reporting that Harry Macklowe plans to sell the GM Building this month. Bids for the 50-story building, arguably the world's most valuable, are due on Feb. 15. And Mr. Macklowe owes billions to his creditors by Feb. 9 (or they need to give him an extension by that date).

So the timing for a multi-billion-dollar sale of the GM Building at 767 Fifth Avenue would not be more opportune for the embattled Mr.  read more »

The Wall Street Journal this morning lays out the stakes for Harry and Billy Macklowe. Bottom line, they owe billions to Deutsche Bank and hedge fund Fortress Investment. They used the billions to finance the epic $7 billion purchase of seven Manhattan office buildings one year ago this month.

Now, the bills are due something awful and the Macklowes may face the disappearance of much of their hard-won empire:  read more »

Just shy of a year since it went to contract, SoHo's 600 Broadway closed for $71 million--more than $1,000 a square foot. We broke the news last year that a group of investors lead by Alex Adjmi bought the six-story home of Pottery Barn from Enterprise Assett Management, and today the Jan. 16 deed was filed in city records.  read more »

We're tempted to wax hyperbolic about the potential sale by Harry Macklowe of the GM Building, so, what the heck, we will: It could fetch a truly historic record, perhaps becoming the biggest single biggest building sale of our lifetimes (and the average age of The Observer's real estate desk is 27.5 right now).

Here's the quick math first, then the historical benchmarks. Most top-flight office towers in New York trade now for at least $1,000 a square foot.  read more »

You're not imagining it: Foreigners really are buying up more of Manhattan lately, and it's not just the condos they adore. They love whole buildings and whole building portfolios, too, apparently.

Foreign buyers account for one-third of the more than $2.6 billion in investment sales in Manhattan currently under contract, according to a report out this morning from brokerage Cushman & Wakefield.

Istithmar has announced the $1.15 billion sale of the former Helmsley Tower at 230 Park Avenue. A partnership between a Goldman Sachs fund and Monday Properties bought the 34-story tower, which Istithmar itself bought in 2005 for $705 million.

The Observer talked with Istithmar CEO David Jackson earlier this year. News of 230 Park's imminent sale was already out.

The Lower East Side building housing Streit's matzo factory has been put on the sales market, Curbed reports. The building, at 148-154 Rivington Street, has been the home of Streit's since 1925; Massey Knakal's marketing it, and it can be torn down or converted into another use. Streit's itself is moving, though it's not clear where.

Larry Silverstein's firm announced on Thursday that it had bought 1177 Avenue of the Americas for over $1 billion. Silverstein properties partnered with the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, and the joint venture bought the midtown tower from Paramount Group.

The Observer broke the news of the deal last month. It's the third big purchase Mr. Silverstein has made with CalSTRS.

SL Green, the city's largest office landlord, announced on Wednesday that it had closed on its $1.575 billion purchase of the two-tower office complex at 388-390 Greenwich Street. Citigroup, the seller in the deal, occupies the 2.6 million-square-foot towers completely and will remain there under a 13-year lease. The Canadian investment firm SITQ was a minority partner in the purchase.

The Observer broke the news of the deal earlier this month.  read more »

The $157 million sale of 470 Park Avenue South has popped up in public records, with the ever-active SL Green shedding yet another Class B property from its portfolio. The buyer, records show, is the insurance giant TIAA-CREF, which seems to have been a relatively inactive trader in the Manhattan real estate scene.  read more »

The sale of 450 Park Avenue has closed for $509 million, according city records. The final sale price means that Somerset Partners bought the 325,000-square-foot Class A office building for just over $1,566 a square foot--a per-foot amount that Bloomberg News has called a U.S. record. Taconic Investment Partners was the seller.

The Observer broke the news of the deal in July.

It seems the Deutsche Bank-owned building at 31 West 52nd Street sold to Albert Behler’s Paramount Group for just shy of $600 million, according to SL Green, the city's biggest office landlord.

Last month, we reported that the building went for more than $500 million, though SL Green today released a slideshow from its investor conference that had a list of recent deals including 31 West 52nd Street (even though, to our knowledge, SL Green wasn't involved in this particular one). The price: $595 million, or $812 a foot for the 723,000-square-foot building.

We have a call out to Paramount to confirm, but haven’t yet heard back.

SL Green, the city's largest office landlord, has agreed to buy Citigroup's two towers at 388-390 Greenwich Street for over $1.575 billion.

SL Green CEO Marc Holliday announced today during the public company’s investor conference that SL Green, in a partnership with the real estate firm SITQ, had gone to contract on two buildings in Lower Manhattan totaling 2.6 million square feet--the size of 388-390 Greenwich.  read more »

A grand old building with the grandest of tenants is going into the hands of a New Jersey-based real estate company.  read more »

The median sales price of Manhattan apartment buildings below 96th Street rose above $500 a square foot for the first time in the first half of 2007, according to a new report from investment-sales brokerage Massey Knakal and appraisal firm Miller Cicero.

The sales price for elevator apartment buildings reached $517 a foot in the first half of the year and the price for walkups reached $508 a foot. These medians were both sizable increases from the first half of 2006.

Other highlights from the report, including stats on Upper Manhattan apartment buildings, after the jump.  read more »

The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel has traded hands as part of one of the biggest property deals in New York City in 2007.

The Shareholders of Hilton Hotels Corporation turned over the hotel at 301 Park Avenue to BH Hotels LLC for $572,343,007, according to real property transfer tax records entered with the city on Nov. 21. Hilton also sold the Hilton New York at 1335 Avenue of the Americas for $757,804,148 and two contiguous lots at 102-108 West 57th Street for $68,989,066.  read more »

Elad Properties is in contract to sell its office building at 250 West Street for about $205 million to a Russian group of investors, according to a source familiar with the deal.

The building sold for about 30 percent more than what Elad paid for it in June 2006, when they bought the building from Citigroup for $142 million.

The sale comes as cash floods in from the company’s condo sales at The Plaza, which is also soon to open its hotel portion.  read more »

Rockrose Development Corp.’s big $228 million buy of 230 Park Avenue South came through on city records today.

Maybe the brothers Tom, Fred and Henry Elghanayan, who own Rockrose, wanted a deal close to home: the 13-story office building sits just four blocks south of Rockrose's offices at 290 Park Avenue South.  read more »

An Upper West Side apartment building has sold for $109,122,536, city records show, with Westbrook Partners buying the 224,000-square-foot building at 235 West 75th Street from AFA Asset Services. The building has 212 apartments, according to PropertyShark.  read more »

City records show that a six-story apartment building at 210 West 109th Street, a few blocks south of Columbia University, has sold for $8.25 million. The buyer is hotelier Morris Moinian of Fortuna Realty Group and the seller is an LLC.

We just got word from Besen & Associates’s Adelaide Polsinelli that she’s brokered a deal to sell 316 East 83rd Street. The five-story prewar walk-up between First and Second Avenues has 20 units and was sold for $4.5 million. The seller was the Punnett Family, and the buyer an LLC.

The units rent for an average of $1,400 per month. Looks like the Upper East Side really does have a good number of apartment deals.

The sale of 450 Park Avenue is a done deal--and it was a whopper of one, setting a per-square-foot record of $1,566 for a U.S. office building, according to Bloomberg News.

The Observer called it back in July, when the building went to contract. Back then, we wondered why Harry Macklowe didn't buy 450 Park, considering he controls the development site next to it.

Oh well. Now, officially, Somerset Partners owns it. Taconic Investment Partners and the New York Common Retirement Fund were the sellers.

SL Green announced this morning that it has entered into an agreement to sell 470 Park Avenue South for $157 million, or about $604 per square foot. The firm did not name the buyer, calling it in a release “an undisclosed institutional owner of real estate.”

SL Green, the city’s largest office landlord, acquired the 260,000-square-foot office building at 31st Street in 1997. It’s 96 percent leased.

CB Richard Ellis represented SL Green on the deal.

The Observer’s John Koblin will have more on SL Green’s third-quarter maneuverings and earnings in Wednesday’s print edition.

For all the chatter about foreign money inundating Manhattan, when it comes to buying and selling massive properties like skyscrapers and apartment portfolios, Americans still lead the way. You go, America!

According to a new report from brokerage heavyweight Cushman & Wakefield, only 12 percent of the investment-sales transactions closed or put under contract in the first three quarters of 2007 have been to foreign buyers alone. It’s been a banner, booming year for investment-sales in Manhattan—the $42.5 billion in property traded through Sept. 30 already dwarfs the amount traded in all of 2006, which itself was a record year.

Other takeaways from the report after the jump.  read more »

One of the biggest real estate deals ever is over. A partnership of Tishman Speyer and Lehman Brothers has finished acquiring real estate investment trust Archstone-Smith in a $22.2 billion deal. It's the biggest public-to-private acquisition ever in the apartment REIT sector.

As The Observer reported in May, the Archstone portfolio included at least 10 apartment buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Those apartments--unlike the stabilized ones in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, which another Tishman Speyer-led partnership purchased--are market-rate.

Broadway Partners has sold for $375 million the first building it ever bought in Manhattan, 660 Madison Avenue. Broadway Partners' Web site says the 13-story building is 254,474 square feet, meaning it sold for over $1,470 a square foot, a hefty price tag in even today's heated investment sales market. Its tenants include residential real estate behemoth the Corcoran Group and the flagship retail location of Barneys New York.

Scott Lawlor's ravenous Broadway bought 660 Madison in May 2006 for $216 million, and went to contract on its sale in August of this year; the sale was recorded in city records this morning. The buyer was Etoile 660 Madison LLC.

Four apartment buildings in Washington Heights with 87 apartments total have gone on the sales market for an asking price of $11.25 million. The sellers have owned the five-story buildings at 575-587 West 177th Street for over 20 years, according to a broker with Marcus & Millichap, the firm handling the sale.

Is it any wonder they'd want to sell now?

The Parc Lincoln building at 164 West 75th Street has traded hands for $32.8 million, or $400 a square foot. The Upper West Side tower has 214 apartments, one of which is rented by Cynthia Nixon, who played the dependably career-minded Miranda Hobbes on HBO's Sex and the City. The prewar building's ground-floor space is occupied by the restaurant Cesca, where Yoko Ono has a private table, according to Adelaide Polsinelli, who brokered the sale for the landlord along with her Besen & Associates colleague Amit Doshi.

The landlord was Margules & Associates, and the buyer is listed only as 164 West 75th Street LLC.

Interesting factoid: 100 of the building's apartments are rented for less than $500 a month. No word on whether Ms. Nixon is getting such a deal.

A release comes in today about a sale at 222 East 41st Street (Wells Real Estate bought the building, for a price over $300 million, The Real Deal reports).

Perhaps most interestingly, the email accompanying the press release said: "Please see attached release for details of this latest 25-story, Class A+ midtown office building acquisition."  read more »

The growing fears over the credit markets are affecting everyone, but it seems that Real Estate Investment Trusts are suffering the most.  read more »

The huge sale of the Lipstick Building is now official. The sought-after tower at 885 Third Avenue closed on July 9 for $606.7 million, according to city records.

The details of the deal, however, will make anyone’s head spin.  read more »

SL Green’s sale of 292 Madison is a done deal, and the prolific city landlord made a healthy profit off the transaction.

The 193,000-square-foot, 26-story office building sold for $140 million on June 7, according to city records. The New York Post reported when the deal went to contract back in April to the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Real Estate Investors.  read more »

The Macklowes are considering a plan to sell a few towers from their massive seven-building portfolio buy in February.

Billy Macklowe told Crain’s this week that when he and father Harry bought the portfolio they “always considered an exit,” which could take the form of finding a financial partner for some of the towers or “the sale of one or two buildings.”  read more »

The Clocktower at 1 Madison Avenue officially belongs to Lev Leviev.

The building went to contract for $200 million in May to Leviev's Africa Israel, which purchased it from SL Green, Aby Rosen's RFR Holding and Ian Schrager.  read more »

Westbrook Partners has purchased the Paramount Hotel on 46th Street near Eighth Avenue for $152 million, according to both real property transfer tax and real estate transfer tax forms.

The New York Post reported in May that the building had been sold to Walton Street Capital, an investment fund in Chicago.

Now, it seems that there was a hidden partner in this deal. Walton Street Capital and Westbrook didn't return calls for comment.

The hotel is located at 235 West 46th Street and was slated for a conversion into a Hard Rock Hotel, which was the seller in this deal. The Post reported that now that the hotel has traded hands, it will likely remain as the Paramount, where, as its Web site lists, "Rooms start from just $249!"

John and Dan Tishman appear to be making way for their second Manhattan hotel. Tishman Realty & Construction recently closed on five properties just west of Times Square for $128 million, according to city records. The hotel and construction magnate purchased the properties under the name West 44th Street Hotel LLC, a hint perhaps that yet another hotel will be developed in Manhattan.

A spokesman for Tishman Realty confirmed the sale, but demurred on confirming development plans. “A venture led by Tishman Realty affiliates has purchased a 30,000-square-foot parcel of land on the southwest corner of Eighth Avenue and West 44th Street in Manhattan,” the spokesman wrote in an email to The Observer. “We are currently exploring development options and will announce details in the future."  read more »

Forbes will, indeed, announce today that it’s leaving its longtime Greenwich Village home in favor of a new, to-be-constructed headquarters somewhere in Manhattan. Forbes.com confirmed this morning the rumor that started floating around on Thursday.

Forbes will sell the eight-story 60 Fifth Avenue, its headquarters since 1965, for one simple, very New York reason, according to C.E.O.  read more »

Gawker reports that Forbes will announce it's selling its headquarters at 60 Fifth Avenue and is in talks to build a new headquarters in the city.

An anonymous tipster on Gawker said:  read more »

SL Green now controls its biggest trophy yet.

SL Green announced this morning that it paid $317 million for the majority of the land beneath the Lipstick Building at 885 Third Avenue. SL Green, along with its investing partner Gramercy Capital Corp, will control 79 percent of the fee portion of the building and 21 percent of the leasehold position.  read more »

After an absolute blitz of activity at the beginning of the year, Broadway Partners has remained relatively quiet on the commercial real estate acquisition front over the last few months.

However, that changed today when the New York-based investment and management firm announced its acquisition of 500 West Monroe Street in Chicago. The 46-story, 973,100-square-foot property, whose tenants include GE Capital and Marsh and McLennan, boasts the largest in-building parking garage in the Windy City, according to a press release.

Broadway Partners has been one of the most active real estate investment firms in the country over the last year. In March, news came of a deal with Beacon Capital Partners for a portfolio of an astounding $5 billion in property across the country, including the two Manhattan trophies, 237 Park Avenue and 100 Wall Street. The transaction had tongues wagging, largely because it dwarfed the $3.3 billion deal that Broadway Partners closed with Beacon in late-2006.  read more »

The last time AIMCO, the Denver-based development group, was in the headlines it was in the initial stages of making a bid for Starrett City with big boys Tishman Speyer and the Related Companies.

While AIMCO, and seemingly everyone else, lost out on that deal, the group has not slowed down. It recently closed on an eight-property deal in Harlem for $53.75 million, according to a company spokesperson.  read more »

“The real estate market in New York these days is like the weather,” Cushman & Wakefield’s Joe Harbert said this morning. “Hot!”

The chief operating officer for the New York region certainly had the statistics to back up that statement when the firm released its midyear report for the Manhattan commercial real estate market this morning.  read more »

Stonehenge Partners continues to add to its already impressive Manhattan portfolio. The real estate company recently closed on a seven-story, 90,000-square-foot apartment building at 330 East 63rd Street for $39 million, according to city records. (UPDATE: The Real Deal in late June reported the purchase closed.)

The acquisition of the 93-unit building between First and Second avenues brings the total number of city units owned by Stonehenge to over 2,000.

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