Pre COVID, the average price per square foot for the purchase of an office building / high-rise in Manhattan was $914 per square foot (in the spring of ‘19 (Robert Knakal, CO, 4/16/19). Post COVID is a different story. In March of 2024, the 98,556 square foot 129 West 29th Street sold for $314.00 a square foot (CO 4/23/24). 529 Fifth Avenue, a 254,123 square foot building, sold for $105M, or $400 per square foot, in March of 2023 (CO 4/4/23). The 684,500 square foot 175 Water Street closed in October of 2022 for $252 million, or $368.00 a square foot (CO 10/18/22). That would be way below the cost of land plus construction. In general, prices for office buildings run from $600 to $1,000 per foot. Recent sales include 475 Fifth Avenue which traded for $1,320 per square foot (in early 2022) and 609 Fifth Avenue, in contract this summer for $723 per square foot. In 2021 COVID the famous Black Rock at 51 West 52nd Street sold for $760 million, or $930.00 a square foot (lease - able not real square footage). 635-641 Avenue of the Americas COVID time sold for $325 million, or $1,203 a square foot. The 350,000 square foot 44 Wall Street sold for $571.00 per square foot just before the corona virus began in early March of 2020. The 660,000 square foot former Lord & Taylor flagship at 424 Fifth Avenue traded at the same time for $1,481.00 a square foot, which was probably very high as it was an Amazon purchase. 398 Fifth Avenue, a 39 story 460,000 square foot tower, traded in May of 2019 for $381 million, or $828 a square foot. A bit lower per square foot transaction was the sale in the fall of 2019 of One Whitehall, which closed for $181.5 million, or about $500 per square foot. The 2018 sale of the Chelsea Market building at $2.4 billion, or $2,000 a square foot, ends up breaking all kinds of records, but it is Google money, and so should not be considered "ordinary." Other record setting numbers are the GM Building at 767 Fifth Avenue ($2.8 billion, or $1,400 per square foot), 11 Madison Avenue ($2.3 billion, or $973 per square foot), 3 Bryant Park ($2.2 billion, or $1,875 per square foot) and 245 Park Avenue ($2.2 billion, or $1,127 per square foot).In 2017, the average sale price for office properties dropped 23 % in 2016 - 2017 from $964 to $741 (REW 4/19/17). The most recent benchmark sale was for the Goldman Sachs building at 85 Broad Street, which sold for $650 million, or $580.00 a square foot. The price would have been higher had it been in midtown.
Other record sales per square foot for office properties in New York were the Jaunuary, 2015 trade of 837 Washington Street, which is a 63,000 sf property, that went for $200 million, or $3,158 a square foot, and the Crown Building sale, 730 Fifth Avenue, which traded for $4,490 per foot for the 400,000 square foot tower. The re-addressed 1.2 million rentable square foot 3 Bryant Park sold late in 2015 for $1,800 per square foot...1285 Sixth Avenue sold to the Chinese for about $916.00 a square foor in June of 2016...
The most expensive office building sale in 2013 was 650 Madison Avenue, which sold for $1.35 billion, or about $2,200 a square foot. The highest sale on a per square foot basis for a New York City office class A building in 2017 is set to be the the $2.21 billion sale ($1,220 per square foot) of 245 Park Avenue. Other exceptionally high sales in the same year were the purchase of 525 Broadway, a 45,000 square foot class B loft building, that closed for $1,900 a square foot and the sale of 12 West 57th Street, which closed for $120 million, or $1,400 a square foot. 650 Madison Avenue traded for $2,100 per square foot in the fall of 2013 ($1.295 billion for 600,000 sf). The early 2015 sale of 281 Park Avenue South, which traded for $1,111 PSF is also a good number to note. The largest building sale in 2016 was for 787 Seventh Avenue, (1.7 million square feet, $1.9 billion / $590.00 a square foot).
A recent sale price for a development site at 112 Liberty Street (FIDI) was $21.7 million, for what is reported to be suitable for a 112,000 building…or $193 per development square foot. One would then need to add the cost of construction square footage to get to the final development cost (4/16/24 CO).
In the fall of 2013, the average sale price, per square foot, for a hotel property was $701,
and for multifamily properties $472. For 2013 average price per square foot for the purchase of a class A office building was $911.00 (10/8/13 CO). For all office buildings, the average sale price per square foot in 3Q13 was $693.00, a 21% increase from 2012 (CO 11/5/13).
By the mid 2008's, prices for class "A" office buildings were as high as $1,566 per square foot at 450 Park Avenue (which then traded for $1,700 in 2014) , $1,200 per square foot for Five Times Square, and $1,578 per square foot for the General Motors Building.
One would think that those days would be long over, but in January, 2013, a similar deal was announced to sell the Sony Building at 550 Madison Avenue for $1.1 billion, or over $1,300 a square foot, which to this broker seems way too high. This could be compaired to the low sale of the AIG downtown buildings at 70 Pine and 72 Wall Street (a total of 1.4 million square feet of office space), which sold for $105 per square foot in June of 2009. Worldwide Plaza's sale at $375.00 a square foot was for almost a third of what Maclowe had paid for it just a few years earlier.