Deka buys NYC office for $123.2m

The German open-ended fund continues its acquisition spree, snapping up the 292,000 sq. ft. midtown office, 19 West 44th St, from SL Green, which the REIT originally bought for $67m in 2004.

The German open-ended fund, Deka Immobilien, has acquired another prime office property, buying 19 West 44th Street in midtown Manhattan for $123.2 million.

The fund bought the 292,000-square-foot Class B office from REIT SL Green, which originally acquired the building in 2004 for $67 million. The property is 99 percent leased, SL Green said in a statement.

19 West
44th Street

SL Green said it would “reinvest” the $118 million profit from the deal in 125 Park Avenue, the 25-storey office building it bought in May from Shorenstein Properties for $330 million or a cap rate of 5.7 percent, according to data provider Real Capital Analytics.

Deka and other German open-ended funds have become active cross-border buyers of commercial real estate property in the past two years.

In August alone, Deka bought offices in Barcelona, Paris and London spending a total of $439.4 million. According to RCA, the fund acquired 14 Pier Walk in London for $152.3 million shortly followed by the Opera Gramont property in Paris for $97.9 million and the Avienda Diagonal 640 in Barcelona for $189.2 million.

In the 12 months to the first half of 2010, Deka has deployed more than $2 billion of capital on commercial real estate, matched only by Union Investment Real Estate, which acquired more than $2.5 billion. Since 2007, the two open-ended funds have bought more than $7.8 billion and $7.9 billion of property, respectively.

SL Green will continue to manage 19 West 44th Street with Andrew Mathias, chief investment officer, saying the deal was a “positive step toward what we hope will be a full recovery of the Manhattan office market, which we believe is occurring more quickly than in any other major US city”.