Unizo Holdings looks to sell another building out of $1.3B portfolio

Japanese investor Unizo Holdings, which has bought more than $1 billion worth of New York real estate since entering the city five years ago, is looking to sell another of its properties.

The Tokyo-based company put the 400,000-square-foot office building at 440 Ninth Avenue on the Far West Side up for sale, sources told The Real Deal.

It wasn’t immediately clear what Unizo was asking for the building, but sources said it could trade for more than $250 million.

A representative for Unizo could not be immediately reached. The CBRE team of Darcy Stacom and Bill Shanahan is marketing the property. The brokers declined to comment.

Unizo bought the 1920s-era building at the corner of Ninth Avenue and West 35th Street in late 2013 for $211.5 million.

Since that time, Unizo made capital upgrades to the building including modernizing its elevators, and it inked deals such as an expansion with B&H Photo, which has its executive offices at 440 Ninth just a block north of its iconic store on West 34th Street.

It was the first building Unizo purchased in New York in 2013, when the company was then known as Jowa Holdings. In all, Unizo’s spent $1.3 billion acquiring six office properties in the city including the glass-and-steel office building at 685 Third Avenue, which it purchased last year for $467.5 million.

The company’s also made several investments in Washington, D.C.

Unizo is also looking to sell two other properties: the 312,000-square-foot office building at 370 Lexington Avenue and the 255,000-square-foot office building at 321 West 44th Street.

The company paid a combined $412 million to purchase its stakes in the properties in 2015, and they’re expected to sell for a combined value of $435 million.

Cushman & Wakefield’s Doug Harmon and Adam Spies are marketing those two buildings.