Namdar pays $62M for 71 Fifth Avenue leasehold

Namdar Realty Group paid $62 million for the leasehold at 71 Fifth Avenue, less than half the $150 million that market sources told Commercial Observer the interest could fetch when marketing began in 2021. The sale closed Oct. 22, Traded first reported.

Namdar has about 90 years remaining on the leasehold, according to Meridian's Brian Szczapa, one of the brokers. The seller was a joint venture of Madison Capital and Lubert-Adler Partners, which put the leasehold on the market in 2021. The 11-story Class B building at Fifth Avenue and East 15th Street sits between Flatiron and Union Square. The land under the building belongs to family firm Samco Properties and the family of Mark Lapidus, formerly WeWork's global real estate chief.

For allocators, the 2016 price is the comparison: Madison Capital agreed to pay nearly $85 million upfront for the leasehold that year, plus $3.5 million in annual rent, The Real Deal reported. Namdar's $62 million buys a building with one full floor of 15,227 square feet being marketed and a vacant ground-floor retail unit next to a City National Bank branch.

Tenants include WeWork, Dutch payments company Adyen and AI video-editing startup Captions. An unnamed AI company recently took roughly 30,000 square feet off-market in the building, Commercial Observer reported this month. Meridian's Helen Hwang, David Schechtman, Brian Szczapa and Ian Shoenfeld worked the transaction.