Walter & Samuels sells Garment District office building for $21.5M

UPDATED 12:55 p.m., December 3, 2024: The entity Left To Write LLC in care of property management firm Pyrus Management, paid $21.5 million to Walter & Samuels through the entity Daval 36 Associates, LLC for the office building (O6) at 15 West 36th Street in Garment District, Manhattan.
The deal closed on November 21, 2024 and was recorded on December 2, 2024. The property has 80,500 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $267 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 I. Berley. The signatory for the buyer was was attorney Jay H. Kim. The contract date was October 8, 2024. The buyer is in care of Pyrus Management, a property management firm.
The buyer is a group that will occupy a portion of the building, led by an individual named Edward Song, according to sources familiar with the transaction.
A team from Avison Young represented the seller, while Smart City Real Estate Brokers represented the buyer.

Prior sales and revenue

The seller Walter & Samuels had not purchased any other properties and sold six properties in six transactions for a total of $119.1 million over the past 24 months.

The property

The office building in Garment District has 80,500 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 48 feet and is 98 feet deep with a total lot size of 4,740 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 $12.7 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 two DOB violations, $6,250 in ECB penalties, and $10,340 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 52.3 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with hotel buildings next occupying 13 percent of the space. In sales, Garment District has 3.5 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $904.2 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 10th highest in Manhattan. For development, Garment District is the 5th most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 7.5 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 14 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There were four 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 nine of the 29 commercial properties representing 893,725 square feet of the 1,676,094 square feet. The largest owner is Vanbarton Group, followed by Empire Management and then Chandrakant Patel.
On the tax block, there was one new building construction project filed totaling 46,824 square feet. It is a 143-unit, 46,824 square-foot hotel/dormitory/shelter (R-1) building submitted by Richard Fung with plans filed December 4, 2014 and permitted March 9, 2017.

The majority, or 65 percent of the 1.7 million square feet of built space are office buildings, with elevator buildings next occupying 27 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.

Direct link to Acris document. link