Joseph Hoffman’s Bushburg Properties has snapped up another deeply discounted FiDi office building.
Bushburg bought the 1970s-era office building at 100 William Street for $70 million, The Real Deal has learned.
That’s less than half the $167 million price tag the seller, Canada’s Manulife insurance group, paid for the 21-story tower twelve years ago.
At that time, the 400,000-square-foot building was home to the real estate operation of Manulife subsidiary John Hancock Financial and boasted a 95 percent occupancy rate. But today the building is about half empty, making it a strong candidate for a residential conversion.
Bushburg is already at work on one of the city’s largest conversion projects nearby at 80 Pine Street, which the developer is turning into more than 700 apartments.
Representatives for Bushburg and Manulife could not be immediately reached for comment. An Eastdil Secured team led by Will Silverman and Gary Phillips negotiated the sale.
Manulife, Canada’s largest insurer, bought the Emery Roth-designed building in 2013 from Japanese property developer Mitsui Fudosan.
It was a time when, similar to today, many office buildings in the Financial District were being converted into residential, which helped improve fundamentals for the remaining commercial properties in the area.
“There’s quite a bit of activity right now converting Class-A offices in the financial district into residential,” Manulife chief investment officer Warren Thomson told Bloomberg at the time of the purchase. “Those conversions start to reduce the supply. We think it’s going to be an interesting market for commercial rates. There should be some good pricing over time.”
Indeed, Lower Manhattan’s office market improved through the 2010s and much of the conversion activity ceased.
But in the wake of the pandemic, many office buildings have struggled, and enterprising developers have snapped up properties at bargain prices for conversions.
Bushburg last year bought the 1.2 million-square-foot building at 80 Pine Street from Rudin for $160 million. The 40-story office tower was about half empty, and Hoffman’s company quickly got started working on converting floors 2 through 17 into 713 rental apartments.
Bushburg this summer landed a $320 million construction loan for the project from Bridge City Capital and Deutsche Bank.
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