Global developer Naftali Group has closed its purchase of a luxury apartment tower just across Fifth Avenue from New York City's Central Park for what CoStar data shows to be $810 million in Manhattan’s largest multifamily sale in more than three years.
Naftali, based in New York, plans to redevelop the property, a spokesperson told CoStar News, declining to be more specific.
The privately held real estate firm is known for projects including the Benson luxury condo building at 1045 Madison Ave., which it debuted and has sold out in recent years. Besides its portfolio of residential and commercial properties in New York, it has holdings and development projects in Florida and Singapore, according to its website.
The Fifth Avenue property is expected to be demolished for a luxury condo building, according to the Commercial Observer.
The 33-story, 208-unit property at the corner of 61st Street has a vacancy rate of 0.5%, below the 1.9% for the Lenox Hill market where the property sits, according to CoStar data.
Newmark, which brokered the debt, told CoStar News on Friday that the purchase comes after Naftali secured $675 million in financing from JPMorgan Chase and GoldenTree.
Spitzer Enterprises and Winter Properties were the sellers, CoStar data shows. Spitzer was said to have been founded by Bernard Spitzer, father of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer; Eliot Spitzer took over after his father's death.
The deal was Manhattan’s largest multifamily transaction since June 2022, when Blackstone bought the Frank Gehry-designed 8 Spruce St. for $930 million, CoStar data shows.
The purchase comes as New York contends with what the city has reported as a historic low rental vacancy rate of 1.4%.
New York’s market-rate apartment vacancy rate of 3.5% is less than half the U.S. average of 8.1%, according to CoStar data. The city’s record-high market asking rent of about $3,350 is about double the national average of $1,772, CoStar data shows.
The median residential rent in Manhattan in July rose to a new high for the fifth time in six months to $4,700, up from $4,300 a year earlier, according to a Douglas Elliman report released Thursday and compiled by appraiser Miller Samuel. The median rent for both non-doorman and doorman apartments reached new highs while the market share of bidding wars, which indicates demand, also rose to an all-time high.
Manhattan condo sales also continued to grow. A separate Elliman study, also compiled by Miller Samuel, found newly signed contracts in July for condos, co-ops and one- to three-family homes all rose “sharply” in Manhattan.
For the record
Newmark's Jordan Roeschlaub and Nick Scribani brokered the debt. Newmark's Adam Spies and Doug Harmon advised on the sale.