Foreign buyers drive office-condo sales

From the October issue: Earlier this year, an office condo building in Chinatown sold out in just a few short months — all to Chinese businesses.

Farther uptown, across the street from the United Nations, the city’s largest recent office condo conversion brought 98 commercial units to the market late last year. Foreign buyers, such as diplomatic missions, are showing the most interest so far.

And in Eastern Queens, nearly all the recently built or under-construction office condos are located in Flushing, where buyers from the bustling Asian community dominate. Indeed, earlier this year, F&T Group, Rockefeller Group and AECOM Capital filed plans to develop 75 commercial condo units at its massive mixed-use project known as Flushing Commons. That is the largest outer borough commercial condo project in the works. [more]