UBS seeks $125M for UES apartment tower

Buyer would have option to extend 421a deal or make building fully market-rate

UBS' Ralph Hamers and 408 East 92nd Street (ING Group CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons, Google Maps, Getty Images)
UBS' Ralph Hamers and 408 East 92nd Street (ING Group CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons, Google Maps, Getty Images)

An Upper East Side apartment tower nearing the end of its affordability agreement is for sale, providing potential buyers with a proposition: extend its lucrative tax break in exchange for deeper affordability, or let it lapse to make the building 100 percent market-rate.

The real estate management arm of Swiss bank UBS is looking to sell the 32-story RiverEast rental tower at 408 East 92nd Street for somewhere between $120 million and $125 million, The Real Deal has learned.

Developed in 2004, the building has an affordability agreement, set to expire in 2026, that subjects 20 percent of its 196 units to rent stabilization in exchange for the 421a property tax abatement.

A new owner could either let the agreement expire and bring the rent-restricted units to market-rate, or exercise an as-of-right 15-year extension of the valuable tax break that would bump the property up to 25 percent affordability, according to marketing materials from Eastdil Secured, which is handling the sale.

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A representative for UBS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The bank bought the RiverEast building for $95 million in 2006 from Chicago-based developer the John Buck Company, property records show.

A block south, Ofer Yardeni’s Stonehenge paid a little more than $128 million earlier this year to buy the 22-story rental building at 354 East 91st Street, whose 163 units are fully market-rate.