Benjamin Yam pays $5.2M for office in Chinatown

Benjamin Yam through the entity 121 Bowery LLC paid $5.2 million to Josephine Ho Liu through the entity 121 Bowery Realty Corp. for the office building (O5) at 121 Bowery in Chinatown, Manhattan.
The deal closed on September 7, 2022 and was recorded on September 16, 2022. The property has 9,249 square feet of built space according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $556 per the PincusCo analysis. (The price per square foot analysis is the transaction price divided by square feet as reported in public records and assumes no air rights have been sold.)
The signatory for Josephine Ho Liu was Mohamad Nader Ahari. The signatory for Benjamin Yam was Diane Chan. Josephine Ho Liu is deceased.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, Pincusco has no record that the buyer Benjamin Yam had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Josephine Ho Liu had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period. The 9,249-square-foot property generated revenue of $454,311 or $49 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

The property

The 121 Bowery parcel has frontage of 25 feet and is 102 feet deep with a total lot size of 2,577 square feet. The lot is irregular. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $2.1 million.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property since September of 2020. In addition, according to city public data, the property has not received any significant violations in the last year.

Development

There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $5 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Chinatown, the bulk, or 35 percent of the 8.5 million square feet of commercial built space are walkup buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 17 percent of the space. In sales, Chinatown has had very little sales volume relative to other neighborhoods with $121 million in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Chinatown has had very little major development activity relative to other neighborhoods.It had 494,107 square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 6 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of two of the 28 commercial properties representing 13,225 square feet of the 331,618 square feet. The two identified owners are John S. Eng and Chun Chu Realty Inc..
There are two active new building construction projects totaling 25,482 square feet. The largest is a zero-unit, 12,989-square-foot M building developed by Chun Cheng with plans filed April 2, 2016 and it has not been permitted yet.The second largest is a 12,493-square-foot M building developed by Chun Cheng with plans filed March 24, 2016 and it has not been permitted yet.

The majority, or 30 percent of the 331,618 square feet of built space are mixed-use buildings, with walkup buildings next occupying 28 percent of the space.

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