Sellers are used to adjusting their prices in today’s investment-sales market. But a $30 million haircut still stands out.
After putting a 159-unit Upper West Side rental building on the market for $115 million ($1,400 a foot) in late 2015 with little luck, Simon Baron Development is now asking $85 million ($1,044 a foot) for the property, a chop of 26 percent.
The 16-story, 81,399-square-foot elevator building at 166 West 75th Street is known as the AMSTRDM. It has 90 free-market units and 69 rent-regulated units, according to Meridian Investment Sales’ David Schechtman, who has the exclusive on the property with Lipa Lieberman, Abie Kassin, Paul Patafio and Inbal Himelblau-Denman.
David Schechtman
“In this market, serious sellers are acutely aware of expectations related to pricing and with more than $15 million in infrastructure and cosmetic improvements we expect investors to greet this offering fervently,” said Schechtman, who added that “the light and air tenants enjoy will be preserved in perpetuity, given the landmark district in which the property resides.”
The contemporary Italian-American restaurant Cesca occupies retail space on the ground floor.
Midtown-based Simon Baron, headed by Jonathan Simon and Matthew Baron, bought the building for $43 million at a foreclosure sale in 2013. At the time, the property was a 214-unit single-room-occupancy hotel.
According to the brokers, the developers put $15 million into converting the SRO units into apartments and upgrading the building, where StreetEasy shows the free-market rentals average $69 per square foot.
The average sales price for multifamily building on the Upper West Side has actually climbed from $709 per square foot during the first three months of 2016 to $787 per square foot in the first quarter of this year, according to Ariel Property Advisors, though the sample sizes are based on a small handful of deals.
Overall, the city’s multifamily investment-sales market was down 43 percent year-over-year during the second quarter to $1.9 billion in transactions, Ariel’s most-recent report shows.