Japanese company pays $5.5M to Yoko Ono for loft in SoHo she shared with John Lennon

The Japanese firm Azabu Building K.K. paid $5.5 million to Yoko Ono and Sean Oko Lennon through the entity Sekhmet Productions Inc. for the industrial building (F5) at 496 Broome Street in SoHo, Manhattan. Yoko Ono and John Lennon lived in the loft building in the 1970s before moving to the Dakota on Central Park West.
The deal closed on October 7, 2024 and was recorded on October 8, 2024. The property has 3,832 square feet of built space and 3,675 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 7,500 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $1,435 and the price per buildable square foot is $733 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 Yoko Ono and Sean Oko Lennon was Jonas Herbsman. The contract date was August 20, 2024.

Yoko Ono through the entity Ono Music Inc. bought the building in November 1971.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Azabu Building K.K. had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Yoko Ono had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

The property

The industrial building in SoHo has 3,832 square feet of built space and 3,675 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 7,500 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 20 feet and is 75 feet deep with a total lot size of 1,500 square feet. The zoning is M1-5/R7X which allows for up to 5 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing and up to 5 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The property is in the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $1.1 million.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months. In addition, according to city public data, the property has received $700 in OATH penalties in the last year.

Development

There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $1 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In SoHo, The bulk, or 46 percent of the 9.5 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 14 percent of the space. In sales, SoHo has 2.1 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $537.3 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 16th highest in Manhattan. For development, SoHo has had very little major development activity relative to other neighborhoods.It had 214,448 square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 2 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of six of the 12 commercial properties representing 152,828 square feet of the 187,863 square feet. The largest owner is Macquarie Group, followed by Christian Cigrang and then Reuben Brothers.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 62 percent of the 187,863 square feet of built space are office buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 21 percent of the space.

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