Queens investor in contract on Chinatown retail condo for $28M

Gurpeet Singh’s Jamaica Woods to acquire three-floor, 17K sf unit at 11 East Broadway

11 East Broadway in Chinatown
11 East Broadway in Chinatown

Gurpreet Singh, a Jamaica, Queens-based investor, is in contract to acquire a three-floor retail condominium unit in Chinatown for $28 million, sources told The Real Deal.

Singh’s Jamaica Woods Holding LLC is paying $1,664 per square foot for the nearly 17,000-square-foot property, consisting of the first three floors and basement of a 15-story, 58,000-square-foot commercial condo building at 11 East Broadway, on the corner of Catherine Street.

Jamaica Woods will acquire the space – currently triple net leased to HSBC Bank for the next eight years, plus a 10-year tenant renewal option — from a consortium of Chinese American professionals who own many of the office condos at 11 East Broadway, sources said.

The professionals, largely doctors and lawyers, either have their own offices in the building or rent them out to accounting, dental or legal tenants. They also developed the Wyndham Garden Chinatown, a 106-room hotel located nearby at 93 Bowery.

Kevin Salmon and Christian Wood of Midtown-based Khizer Property Advisors represented both the buyer and the seller. Salmon confirmed the transaction, and said Khizer is also representing the seller consortium as it prepares to put the office condo units it owns on the upper floors of the building on the market in the coming weeks.

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Singh is buying the retail condo at a 4.4 percent cap rate as part of a 1031 exchange, having recently sold a Jamaica apartment building.

The investor was drawn to “the stability of the tenant as well as the long-term potential of the property and location,” Khizer said in a statement announcing the deal, and remains in the market “to acquire additional properties up to $20 million that are a 4.2 percent cap or greater.”

Neither Jamaica Woods nor the selling consortium could be reached for comment.

In 2013, Kee Lin, a former property manager at 11 East Broadway, pleaded guilty to stealing more than $1.5 million from the building’s business account – and that of another building at 128 Mott Street – through writing authorized checks. Kee was sentenced to up to three years in prison.