China takes gold in NY office building buys | Katonah NY Real Estate
A record tide of foreign buyers flooded into the city last year snapping up Manhattan office buildings. All told, overseas investors bought $5.5 billion worth of office towers in Manhattan in 2013, according to a new report released by the real estate brokerage Colliers International. The deals included One Chase Manhattan Plaza in lower Manhattan, 1211 Sixth Ave. in midtown and a large stake in the city's most expensive office tower, the General Motors Building on East 59th Street.
Not only did that spending set a new record for foreign investment in Manhattan commercial real estate, it also established a new high for such spending as a portion of the total. Last year foreigners accounted for 28% of the $20 billion worth of office property deals done in Manhattan.
The total dollar figure was nearly twice as much as the previous record, the $3 billion that foreigners poured into the Manhattan market in 2007, according to James Murphy, a sales broker at Colliers International, who was one of the authors of the report. He noted that Manhattan has long been a target for deep-pocketed buyers because of the New York office-property market's record of delivering solid gains over time, and because of the simple fact that buildings here can cost over a billion dollars, allowing investors eager to invest large buckets of money to accomplish that in a single deal.
"There are few places for investors to place large amounts of money into commercial real estate as efficiently as Manhattan," Mr. Murphy said.
While overseas buyers have long been active in Manhattan, it was an influx of investment from Asia, led by China, that kicked that investment to unprecedented levels last year. In the two largest of those transactions, Chinese property group Fosun acquired the 60-story, 2.2 million-square-foot office tower One Chase Manhattan Plaza for over $700 million, and Zhang Zin, a Chinese real estate mogul who controls the Beijing-based developer Soho China, purchased a roughly $700 million stake in the GM Building.
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20140227/REAL_ESTATE/140229881/china-takes-gold-in-ny-office-building-buys#
Not only did that spending set a new record for foreign investment in Manhattan commercial real estate, it also established a new high for such spending as a portion of the total. Last year foreigners accounted for 28% of the $20 billion worth of office property deals done in Manhattan.
The total dollar figure was nearly twice as much as the previous record, the $3 billion that foreigners poured into the Manhattan market in 2007, according to James Murphy, a sales broker at Colliers International, who was one of the authors of the report. He noted that Manhattan has long been a target for deep-pocketed buyers because of the New York office-property market's record of delivering solid gains over time, and because of the simple fact that buildings here can cost over a billion dollars, allowing investors eager to invest large buckets of money to accomplish that in a single deal.
"There are few places for investors to place large amounts of money into commercial real estate as efficiently as Manhattan," Mr. Murphy said.
While overseas buyers have long been active in Manhattan, it was an influx of investment from Asia, led by China, that kicked that investment to unprecedented levels last year. In the two largest of those transactions, Chinese property group Fosun acquired the 60-story, 2.2 million-square-foot office tower One Chase Manhattan Plaza for over $700 million, and Zhang Zin, a Chinese real estate mogul who controls the Beijing-based developer Soho China, purchased a roughly $700 million stake in the GM Building.
http://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20140227/REAL_ESTATE/140229881/china-takes-gold-in-ny-office-building-buys#
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