HFZ Capital Group and Vornado Capital Partners bought a 12-story apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper East Side for $170 million.
The property, at 11 E. 68th St. at Madison Avenue, includes 5,000 square feet (470 square meters) of retail that will be owned and managed by Vornado Capital, an $800 million fund sponsored byVornado Realty Trust (VNO), New York-based HFZ said today in a statement. HFZ will own and renovate the rental housing.
”We are delighted to purchase an apartment building with such a distinguished New York history,” Ziel Feldman, HFZ’s founder and president, said in the statement. The property’s residences ”could never be replicated in today’s market. Gracious, old-world proportions in one of the best locations in Manhattan make the property totally unique,” he said.
The building was owned by the same entity, which the buyers didn’t name, since it was built in 1913, according to the statement. The 44 apartments have asking rents ranging from $2,750 for a studio to $8,500 for a one-bedroom, according to StreetEasy.com, a real estate listings website. The landlord offered discounts to tenants who signed a lease by Jan. 5 and accepted the ”flexibility” of a shorter lease period, according to StreetEasy.
Eastdil Secured LLC was the broker for the deal. Doug Harmon, senior managing director at New York-based Eastdil, declined to comment. Wendi Kopsick, a spokeswoman for Vornado, said she couldn’t immediately comment.
Manhattan apartment rents climbed 4.9 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier as tenants opted to renew leases in a tightening market, according to an Oct. 13 report by appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and broker Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. The median effective rent, or what tenants pay after landlord-sponsored incentives, increased to $2,970 a month from $2,831 a year earlier.
