Centurion pays $227m for Manhattan apartments
Centurion Real Estate Partners has paid $227.3 million for the 196-unit Corner Apartments in Manhattan’s Upper West Side neighborhood, according to media reports.
The seller was TH Real Estate, an affiliate of Nuveen, the investment management arm of TIAA, which acquired the apartments in 2011 for $209 million.
Manhattan’s total sales volume in the past year was $29.3 billion, as of December 2018, according to Real Capital Analytics data by Savills Studley. That total is an increase from the $23.9 billion sales volume in 2017 but a drop from 2016.
The Manhattan multifamily market saw a significant increase in midtown Manhattan sales in September, according to a third quarter 2018 Manhattan multifamily market report by Cignature Realty Associates, a Manhattan-based commercial real estate brokerage firm that specializes in the sale of multifamily and mixed-use Manhattan apartment buildings.
The report revealed September deals represented more than half of the total sales volume for the entire third quarter. Dollar volume was average for the past six quarters, with $1.2 billion in third quarter 2018 as compared with $1.4 billion in third quarter 2017. Third quarter building volume was the lowest of the past six quarters, with 69 buildings sold in third quarter 2018, compared with 87 sold in third quarter 2017.
And the median sales price of units sold in Manhattan fell nearly 6 percent from the same period last year to $999,000 from October to December, according to a report from listing broker Douglas Elliman Real Estate, the lowest since 2015. The number of total sales fell for a fifth consecutive quarter.
And sales were down 12 percent from 2017 levels, according to The Wall Street Journal, and off 22.5 percent from peak sales levels in 2013, the high point since the financial crisis began in fall 2008. The article reports: “While home sales across the country have shown recent signs of slippage, they have been retreating for far longer in Manhattan, a bellwether for luxury markets, despite a strong local economy. Inventory in Manhattan has been rising for several years, and brokers said it was likely to rise further during the peak spring season.”
The outer boroughs overtook apartment sales volume in Manhattan during second quarter 2018, according to RCA, with approximately $1.7 billion worth of apartment sales in the outer boroughs from April through June, compared with about $739 million in Manhattan. This was the largest gap between outer borough sales and Manhattan sales since at least the start of 2013, with the outer boroughs outpacing Manhattan by about $976 million.
RCA concluded, one of the main reasons for the gap between Manhattan and the outer boroughs in the second quarter was the sale of Starrett City in Brooklyn, valued at $905 million.
