Slate Property Group and GreenOak Real Estate are in late-stage talks to buy the Biltmore rental tower in Midtown for north of $250 million, sources told The Real Deal.
The partners are close to signing a contract to buy the 464-unit rental building at 271 West 47th Street from the Jack Parker Corporation, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.
The 52-story tower is part of the seven-property, mixed-use portfolio that Jack Parker put on the market earlier this year.
Representatives for Slate, GreenOak and Jack Parker did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Newmark Knight Frank’s Jimmy Kuhn and David Colen, who are marketing the portfolio, also could not be reached.
Slate, led by David Schwartz and Martin Nussbaum, and Sonny Kalsi’s GreenOak have teamed up before. The partners bought the 38-story rental building at 420 East 54th Street in early 2016 for $390 million and, after a renovation, rebranded it as the Oriana at River Tower. Just last week, GreenOak raised $1.6 billion for its latest real estate fund.
The partners are said to be planning a similar repositioning with the Biltmore, which Jack Parker teamed up with the Moinian Group to develop in 2001. At the time, it was one of a handful of new apartment towers sprouting up along Eighth Avenue in the West 40s and 50s. The developers received $134 million in low-rate financing from the state Housing Finance Agency for the 80/20 project, agreeing to set aside 20 percent of the tower’s units at below-market rates for 30 years.
Rents in the building average $59 per square foot, according to StreetEasy. Property records show that Jack Parker refinanced the building with a $128 million loan from the Housing Finance agency in 2005.
Newmark had been marketing the Biltmore as a potential conversion from rentals to for-sale units, with a projected sellout of $473.4 million for 367 units, marketing materials showed.
The Jack Parker portfolio also includes a three-building, 1,327-unit complex in Forest Hills in Queens; the 291-unit Truffles Tribeca rental tower; the 729-key Le Parker Meridien in Midtown; the 144-room Parker Palm Springs Resort in California; the 309,000-square-foot Parker Plaza office building in Fort Lee, New Jersey; and a 16,000-square-foot medical office condo unit on the Upper East Side.