AJ Property Management asking $125M for Chelsea office building

UPDATED, March 13, 10:10 a.m.: Andrew Justin’s AJ Property Management is looking to sell a 15-story Chelsea office building just two blocks south of New York Penn Station.

The 144,300-square-foot property at 231-239 West 29th Street has an asking price of between $120 million and $125 million, or about $830 per square foot, the broker, Rosewood Realty Group’s Aaron Jungreis, said.

Andrew Justin’s firm bought his family’s company Justin Management out of the property in late 2014 for an undisclosed price, according to property records and sources. Before that, the Justin family had owned the property since at least 1972, records show.

The building, located between Seventh and Eighth avenues, is 95 percent occupied. Tenants include graphic design agency über, inc., caviar vendor American Caviar Company and coat shop the Fur Source. The leases are largely short term, ranging from two to five years.

In a rare deviation from multifamily deals, Jungreis was hired to market the office building. His brokerage, ranked No. 5 in The Real Deal’s recent annual ranking of the top investment sales firms, almost exclusively brokers the sale of New York City multifamily buildings.

“This is a wedding-cake building, with rents well below market,” said Jungreis, who added he is marketing the property as a value-add opportunity.

Chelsea asking rents are in the mid-to-high $60s per square foot, according to a fourth-quarter Lee & Associates office leasing report. Meanwhile, at the 29th Street building, asking rents are in the low-$40s a foot, but according to Jungreis, they could reach mid-$50s under new ownership.

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly identified the owner of the property. It is AJ Property Management.