Chase Manhattan Plaza Sale Sets Record for Chinese Buyers

Chase Manhattan Plaza Sale Sets Record for Chinese Buyers
By David M. Levitt - Oct 19, 2013 5:36 AM GMT+0200

JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM)’s deal to sell 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza to Fosun International Ltd. would be the largest purchase of a New York building by a Chinese buyer, showing Asian investors’ growing appetite for U.S. real estate.

Shanghai-based Fosun, run by billionaire Guo Guangchang, agreed to buy the 60-story lower Manhattan tower for $725 million, according to a statement filed to Hong Kong’s stock exchange. The 2.2 million-square-foot (204,000-square-meter) steel skyscraper was completed in 1961.

Chinese buyers are expanding U.S. property investments, seeking yield and a safe haven while the government maintains curbs on domestic purchases. This year, a group including Zhang Xin, the billionaire co-founder of Soho China Ltd. (410), took a stake in midtown Manhattan’s General Motors Building. Greenland Holding Group Co., a Shanghai-based, state-owned developer, agreed this month to buy a 70 percent share of Atlantic Yards, a residential and commercial project in Brooklyn.

“The wave continues with this purchase,” said Dan Fasulo, managing director of property-research firm Real Capital Analytics Inc. “We’ve seen a series of trophy transactions in key cities around the United States done by the Chinese, in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, as well as smaller acquisitions in other markets around the country.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-18/jpmorgan-tower-sale-sets-record-for-chinese-in-new-york.html