Where smart money went: Times Square top neighborhood for 2023 commercial sales

To get a better idea where exactly New York’s top commercial real estate deals are happening, The Real Deal looked at all commercial sales worth $1 million or more recorded last year across the five boroughs. 

We were curious about which neighborhoods saw the most volume changing hands. For this analysis, we excluded large portfolio sales spanning multiple neighborhoods, leaving a sample of 2,558 deals totaling nearly $19 billion.

Unsurprisingly, the top five neighborhoods were all in Manhattan. Times Square topped the league tables with $706 million in volume across 10 deals, led by two hotel transactions that, combined, made up nearly 65 percent of the area’s total. 

Sam Chang’s McSam Hotel Group sold a hotel condo at 150 West 48th Street — home to the Hampton Inn and Home2Suites by Hilton Times Square hotels — to the Houston-based private equity firm Dauntless Capital Partners for $290 million. 

Separately, Sherwood Equities sold the Renaissance New York Times Square Hotel at 2 Times Square to a joint venture of Apollo Global Management and Newbond Holdings for $165 million.

Chelsea came next, with $557 million in total volume across 36 deals, led by Pacific Urban Investors’ $183 million purchase of a 213-unit rental condominium at 125 West 14th Street from Related.

SoHo ranked No. 3 with $505 million in volume across 25 deals. The neighborhood’s biggest deal was a big deal for the city as a whole: The boutique hotel operator Standard International bought the 97-key Sixty Soho hotel at 60 Thompson Street for $107 million from the Pomeranc family’s Sixty Collective. That pencils out to more than $1 million per key, which sets a post-Covid record.

The Garment District took the No. 4 spot with a total volume of $500 million across 24 transactions. The area’s largest commercial property sale was another big hotel sale: Eyal Ofer’s Global Holdings bought the Mondrian Park Avenue, a 190-key hotel at 444 Park Avenue South, from Moin Development for $156 million.

Lenox Hill rounded out the top five with $493 million in volume across 17 deals. The neighborhood’s top deal was the biggest in the whole sample: Black Spruce Management paid Solow Realty & Development $403 million for a multifamily building at 1261 Second Avenue.

It’s not until the No. 6 spot that any outer-borough neighborhoods make the ranking. 

Brooklyn’s North Williamsburg had $459 million worth of commercial property transactions, spread across 34 deals. In Queens, Flushing ranked 10th with $371 million in volume, followed closely by Long Island City at No. 11 with volume of $370 million.

Borough Park in Brooklyn had the most $1 million-plus commercial deals last year, with 74, but those only amounted to a 30th-ranked $225 million in total volume.

Looking only at commercial sales worth $50 million or more, just 12 neighborhoods in the city had more than one last year, led by the Garment District, which boasted four. 

Times Square — the only other neighborhood to see more than two $50 million-plus deals — had three.

To access the full dataset underlying the rankings as well as key contact information, check out TRD Data, The Real Deal’s new data subscription platform. 

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