Fifth Avenue retail condo valued at $277M after GGP deal

General Growth Properties sold its minority stake in the retail condo at 522 Fifth Avenue in a deal that values the property at nearly $277 million.

The national mall REIT sold a 10 percent interest in the condo it purchased for $165 million with partners Ashkenazy Acquisitions and the German financial institution DekaBank back in 2014, GGP CEO Sandeep Mathrani announced on the company’s quarterly earnings call Tuesday.

While Mathrani disclosed neither the buyer nor the purchase price, filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal the 10-percent stake fetched $27.67 million.

“The IRR on this investment is almost 50 percent,” Mathrani said on the call.

GGP and its partners purchased the property at the corner of 44th Street from Morgan Stanley with plans to expand the retail space.

The company also teamed up in 2014 with Joe Sitt’s Thor Equities to buy the office/retail property at 685 Fifth Avenue, where the partners recently leased 23,400 square foot space to Coach for a global flagship store.

“We will deliver the space to Coach by May of this year and we’ll evaluate how we should handle the transaction going forward,” he said. “Whether we hold or sell, it is our job to allocate capital. It’s also our job to make sure that we prune assets and we recycle capital. So we’ll evaluate that later in the year.”

Rumors have also swirled of late that Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management is considering an entity-level acquisition of GGP.