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Bloomberg
Blackstone Group LP is close to an agreement to buy an eight-building apartment complex on Manhattan’s east side, for $620 million, cementing its position as one of New York’s largest residential landlords, according to a person with knowledge of the talks.
The New York-based firm, the world’s largest manager of alternative assets, is planning to buy Kips Bay Court from Phipps Houses, a developer of affordable housing, said the person, who asked not to be identified because negotiations are private. Paula Chirhart, a Blackstone spokeswoman, declined to comment.
The complex, which has 894 market-rate rental units, is on Second Avenue, spanning the blocks of East 26th to 29th streets, close to New York University’s schools of medicine and dentistry, Bellevue Hospital Center and the city chief medical examiner’s office.
Blackstone has made a major push into rental apartments and single-family homes, betting that demand for housing will exceed supply. The company last year teamed with Canadian pension fund Ivanhoe Cambridge to buy Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village for $5.3 billion, gaining more than 11,000 apartments in Manhattan. The red-brick enclave, located between 14th and 23rd streets, is one of the last affordable havens in New York, where rents are triple the national average.
The Kips Bay Court purchase would be the second multifamily acquisition made through Blackstone’s fund for stable, income-producing real estate, Blackstone Property Partners, according to the person with knowledge of the potential transaction. The Stuyvesant Town deal also was done through that fund.
The planned Kips Bay Court deal was reported earlier today by the Real Deal website.