Vanbarton Group Close To Largest Deal Yet With $700M Midtown Office Buy
Vanbarton Group has been one of New York City's most active buyers this year, and it is angling to make its biggest bet yet on a Midtown skyscraper.
Vanbarton is close to paying $700M for 425 Lexington Ave., a 31-story, 750K SF office tower that is 95% occupied, Real Estate Alert reports. The buy would be made on behalf of an unidentified fund, according to REA, which would be purchasing the 20-year-old property from clients of J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
J.P. Morgan bought the building for $664.4M from Hines and Sumitomo Life Realty in 2013. If Vanbarton closes on the sale, it will be yet another in its recent gateway-city spending spree. After raising a $1B fund in 2016 to invest in the country's highest-barrier cities, the firm, led by Gary Tischler and Richard Coles, has dropped hundreds of millions on buildings in Manhattan, San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The sale of 425 Lexington would be yet another major deal in a high-priced spring and summer. While overall deal volume in the market is still slow, big-ticket properties are still trading, such as Terminal Stores and Chelsea Market, Silverstein's $1B purchase of the ABC office complex and Savanna's $640M purchase of 5 Bryant Park.
