Aby Rosen’s RFR Realty is in contract to acquire the office portion of 522 Fifth Avenue from Morgan Stanley for around $350 million, Crain’s reported.
Morgan Stanley occupies all of the office space in the 23-story office building, and was reportedly looking to sell the office condominiums to a new landlord in 2017 as it searched for a new 1.9 million-square-foot Manhattan headquarters.
The investment bank has agreed to stay as a tenant for at least three years after the sale, which will bolster RFR’s attempts to seek financing in a challenging economic environment.
“Well-located office buildings will still receive a much wider appetite from the lending community than some other businesses, such as the hospitality sector, right now,” Newmark Knight Frank’s Dustin Stolly told Crain’s. “The amount of debt that lenders are willing to extend is still a question, but the answer is, we haven’t yet seen lenders pull back.”
Morgan Stanley sold the two-story retail portion of the building to Ashkenazy Acquisition, DekaBank and GGP for $165 million in 2014. GGP later sold its 10 percent stake to an unidentified investor.
The bank had also sought to sell its office building at 1585 Broadway, but did not find any buyers. [Crain’s] — Kevin Sun