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Hyundai Motor Group has acquired an eight-story Tribeca building from Vanbarton Group to house a new office and showroom.
The Seoul-based maker of Hyundai and Kia vehicles paid $273.5M for 15 Laight St., according to a deed posted to New York City property records Wednesday. Hyundai paid cash for the eight-story, roughly 108K SF building, Bloomberg reported.
Vanbarton Group paid $90M for the property, formerly the site for the Tribeca Film Festival, in 2016. The developers tapped Gensler to design a boutique office building, and hired Newmark to market its uncommon visibility — it sits at the mouth of the Holland Tunnel, where 3 million people drive by every month, Commercial Observer reported in 2021.
Vanbarton was asking for rents between $150 and $195 per SF. At 108K SF, the purchase price would be over $2,500 per SF.
Both investment sales and office leasing in New York have been strained as uncertainty continues to hang over building occupancy and rising interest rates have muted investors’ appetites.
There have been some bright spots on the market this year from an office perspective, however. About 4.4M SF of office space was leased in January, the most in any month since the onset of the pandemic, more than double the 1.8M SF signed in December and roughly double the 2.2M SF signed in January 2022.
Hyundai's all-cash purchase show the advantage that cash buyers have in the current interest rate environment, especially as lenders are hesitant to lend on offices.
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