Sami Souid’s Gotham Assets pays $22.2M to Walter & Samuels for Garment District building

Sami Souid’s Gotham Assets through the entity Gotham 225 West 39th Street, LLC paid $22.2 million to David Berley’s Walter & Samuels through the entity Walber 39 Company for the office building (O6) at 225 West 39th Street in Garment District, Manhattan.
The deal closed on March 13, 2024 and was recorded on March 18, 2024. The property has 88,100 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $251 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 Walter & Samuels was David Berley. The signatory for Gotham Assets was Sami Souid. The contract date was January 11, 2024.

Sami Souid and Izak Souid are principals with the clothing company, IHL Group. Izak Souid signed as the new guarantor, when Gotham Assets assumed the the loan held by Apollo’s Athene Annuity, that had an original principal of $16 million.

In another Walter & Samuels property in the Garment District, the lender in September 2023 filed a pre-foreclosure action which tied to a $77 million loan. The case remains active.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Gotham Assets had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Walter & Samuels had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

The property

The office building in Garment District has 88,100 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 75 feet and is 98 feet deep with a total lot size of 7,356 square feet. The zoning is M1-6 which allows for up to 10 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $10.6 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 $650 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 Garment District, The majority, or 69 percent of the 51.8 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with hotel buildings next occupying 12 percent of the space. In sales, Garment District has 2.2 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $629.9 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 15th highest in Manhattan. For development, Garment District is the 5th most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 6.7 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 13 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There was one pre-foreclosure suit filed among other office buildings in the past 12 months.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of eight of the 23 commercial properties representing 738,871 square feet of the 1,803,020 square feet. The largest owner is Yosef Nazar, followed by Ung Realty Co. and then Sioni Group.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 87 percent of the 1.8 million square feet of built space are office buildings, with hotel buildings next occupying 7 percent of the space.

The seller

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Walter & Samuels owned at least nine commercial properties with five residential units in New York City with 535,197 square feet and a city-determined market value of $126.8 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $112.1 million in debt, borrowed from Bank of America and Citibank. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 82 percent of the 535,197 square feet of built space are office properties, with specialty properties next occupying 14 percent of the space. They are all located in Manhattan.

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