Related sells UWS Sagamore rental building

Related Companies has sold the luxury Sagamore apartment building on the Upper West Side as investor demand for multi-family properties rises. The 265-unit rental building, at 189 West 89th Street, went under contract this month for $140 million, sources told Bloomberg News. The buyer is a unit of Chicago-based private equity firm LaSalle Investment Management. “With the sale of the Sagamore, we recognized an opportunity to both extract value for Related and our partners and to reinvest the capital into our acquisition and development initiatives,” Bruce Beal Jr., executive vice president of Related, said in a statement. The deal is the largest by price for a Manhattan multi-family property since March, according to data from Real Capital Analytics. Demand for apartments is climbing as the city’s rental market tightens. Leases almost tripled in the fourth quarter and median rents rose 1.7 percent from a year earlier to $2,950, appraiser Miller Samuel and brokerage Prudential Douglas Elliman said last month. The sale drew at least 15 bidders, according to Doug Harmon, senior managing director at Eastdil Secured, who represented Related and its joint venture partner in the Sagamore deal, the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio. [Bloomberg]