https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/01/nyregion/manhattan-office-building-auction.html

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New York|This 23-Floor Manhattan Office Building Just Sold at a 97.5%
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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/01/nyregion/
manhattan-office-building-auction.html

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This 23-Floor Manhattan Office Building Just Sold at a 97.5% Discount

The sale price of 135 West 50th Street in Midtown, which is only 35
percent full, was a sign of how much the pandemic upended the market
for office buildings in New York City.

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A street view of glass office buildings.
The office space at 135 West 50th Street in Manhattan is about
one-third occupied.Credit...Graham Dickie/The New York Times
Matthew Haag

By Matthew Haag

Aug. 1, 2024

In 2006, the hulking office building at 135 West 50th Street in
Midtown Manhattan sold for $332 million. Tenants occupied nearly
every floor; offices were in demand; real estate was booming.

On Wednesday, it changed hands again, in an unusual online auction --
for $8.5 million.

The staggeringly low sale price of the 23-story glass behemoth that
was once the headquarters of Sports Illustrated is the latest and
perhaps most surprising sign of how the pandemic has upended the
state of office buildings in New York City, home to the largest
central business district in the United States.

Several large Manhattan office buildings have sold in recent years at
steep discounts, some going for less than half of what the previous
owners paid, in a market that has yet to hit rock bottom.

But office developers and sales brokers in New York City said they
could not recall another large Manhattan building like 135 West 50th
that had been sold for so little.

David Sturner, a developer whose father's firm owned the building
before selling it in 2006, was stunned by the final price.

The building, he said, "certainly wasn't the greatest asset we owned"
but was a "solid" property. "What's shocking is how fast the
valuations dropped now that we've seemingly reached bottom, or close
to it," he added.

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