Atlanta-based global investment firm Invesco and its operating partner, Adellco, signed a contract to buy Gramercy Park residential building the Elektra for $125 million, two industry sources said.

Invesco and Adellco agreed in January to buy the 32-story high-rise from a partnership that also includes Adellco and is led by a J.P. Morgan Investment Management fund, the sources said. J.P. Morgan bought the building in 2006 for $92.5 million. This past December, investment sales firm Holliday Fenoglio Fowler began marketing the 166-unit building located at 290 Third Avenue, between 22nd and 23rd streets, which it said was 97 percent occupied, an article from commercial trade publication Real Estate Alert said. [more]

Chart clarification: While CBRE data puts Durst’s portfolio at 7.2 million square feet, a Durst spokesperson later said that figure is actually 9 million.

Asking rents plunged for some of Midtown’s top landlords last year as they competed for the few tenants searching for space in a weak leasing market, but their reductions helped keep their vacancy rates below the market average, experts said. The family-owned Durst Organization dropped its asking rents to $60.82 per square foot in November 2009 from $113.15 per square foot in August 2008, near the pricing peak of the leasing market, according to the most recent data available on Midtown’s top 10 landlords from commercial services firm CB Richard Ellis. The Real Deal compared data from August 2008 to November 2009 for the top 10 landlords in Midtown ranked by square feet owned. The 46 percent decline was the steepest among Midtown’s top 10 landlords, who control 93 million square feet, or about 41 percent of the market. Landlord and tenant leasing broker Cynthia Wasserberger, a managing director at commercial firm Jones Lang LaSalle said the landlords cut prices to attract tenants and keep their buildings filled. “I think all the landlords got aggressive. They were pretty swift in their decision to respond to the market,” Wasserberger said. [more]