The developers of Manhattan’s Trump
Soho will put the hotel and its unsold condominium units up for
sale, said Alex Sapir, one of the property’s builders.
The Sapir Organization, which developed the property with
Bayrock Group LLC, has hired brokers Eastdil Secured LLC and
Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. to hold an auction for the unspecified
number of unsold condominium units and the hotel’s common areas,
said Alex Sapir, president of the Sapir Organization.
Sales of the Trump luxury units come as the city’s supply
of for-sale condos shrinks. There were 3,382 units listed for
sale in the fourth quarter, down 4.6 percent from a year
earlier, according to Jonathan Miller, president of New York
real estate appraiser Miller Samuel Inc.
“This is a real trophy property,” Sapir said in an
interview today. “An asset like this is a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity.”
The 46-story Trump Soho, managed by the Trump Organization,
offers condos for sale that may only be used by their owners for
120 days of a calendar year. For the rest of the time, they’re
offered as hotel rooms, with owners sharing in the rental
revenue.
Testing the Market
The decision to hold the auction comes after the group
received unsolicited offers for the hotel, Sapir said. “They
were numbers that we would be very happy selling at,” he said.
The firm chose to sell by auction to gauge the depth of the
buyer pool and to probe how much investors might pay for a hotel
asset in Manhattan, Sapir said.
Prospective buyers will receive preliminary information
about the sale as early as today and the auction probably will
be held in March or April, he said.
New York City hotel room rates rose 2.6 percent in November
from a year earlier to an average $279 a night, according to
Smith Travel Research Inc. of Hendersonville, Tennessee. Revenue
per available room climbed 6.1 percent to $230, as occupancies
climbed by 3.5 percent over the year.
The property is being marketed to would-be buyers in Asia,
Russia and the Middle East, Sapir said.
Sapir and Bayrock paid down $100 million of debt on the
property owed to iStar Financial Inc. in 2010. Donald Trump
characterized the deal as a “major paydown of the existing
mortgage” which at the time stood at $295 million.
Units for Sale
The 391-unit Trump Soho development has recorded at least
90 sales, according to property-data website StreetEasy.com.
Forty-two units are currently listed for sale, with prices
ranging between $995,000 for a 425-square foot studio to $8.74
million for a 2,331-square-foot two-bedroom, according to
StreetEasy.
The Sapir Organization, based in New York, owns office and
apartment buildings in Manhattan including 11 Madison Ave., home
to Credit Suisse Group AG, and 2 Broadway, where the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority is based. It also owns
about 515 apartment units in Tribeca.
The firm is in talks to acquire a parcel of land near the
World Trade Center where it plans to build a hotel, Sapir said.
To contact the reporters on this story:
Oshrat Carmiel in New York at
ocarmiel1@bloomberg.net;
Tal Barak Harif in New York at
tbarak@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Daniel Taub at
dtaub@bloomberg.net