UPDATED, Aug. 9, 3:05 p.m.: Less than six months after opening its new 23-story Rental Building On East 34th Street, Forkosh Development Group is in contract to sell it to the Gilardian family for $110 million, sources told The Real Deal.
Forkosh [TRDataCustom] wrapped construction on the 105-unit, 126,000-square-foot property at 237 East 34th Street in Murray Hill in March, and, by June, began looking to sell. The property was put up for sale shortly after construction wrapped up, and a buyer was found in a matter of weeks.
The deal, slated to close in the next few weeks, would come out to a price per square foot of about $860.
The Gilardian family, which runs the Gilar Group and controls the entity Gilar Realty LLC, plans to keep the property as rentals, although it was marketed as a potential conversion to condominiums down the road.
Lipa Lieberman
Meridian Capital Group’s Lipa Lieberman, David Schechtman and Abie Kassin are brokering the deal, sources said.
The brokers declined to comment, and neither the buyer nor the seller could be immediately reached.
The building, known as the Theater House, has asking rents ranging from $3,000 for a one-bedroom to $7,000 for a three-bedrooms. Nearly every apartment features a balcony.
Forkosh acquired the site, which formerly housed a Yeshiva University lecture hall, from the school for $15.5 million in 2012. The developer at first considered building a dormitory on the lot, but ultimately filed plans for rental apartments in 2014.
The Gilardians are a sporadic acquirer of Manhattan rental buildings and is perhaps best known for buying the Cafeteria building in Chelsea for $35.6 million in 2014.
While the city’s multifamily investment sales market is in a slump, a handful of newly developed rental buildings have had luck finding buyers. Gili Haberberg’s Arkar bought a new 13-story Lower East Side building for $61.5 million in July and the Brodsky Organization picked up a stake in an affordable-housing tower at the City Point megaproject in Downtown Brooklyn last week.
(To view more commercial sales transactions in Murray Hill, click here)