Hey, there! Log in / Register
The $10 Boston office building
By adamg on Tue, 03/26/2024 - 11:15am
Top of the deed for 179 Lincoln St.
In perhaps the most dramatic example of the decline of the Boston office market yet, Triple Net Investor reports a subsidiary of Blackstone last week sold the five-story 179 Lincoln St. at Kneeland Street in the Leather District for just $10 to local developer Synergy.
Synergy is actually also paying another $76.5 million - to assume the amount remaining on the mortgage Blackstone took out in January, 2020.
But even with that amount included, it still represents a loss for Blackstone, because it paid $155.7 million for the building, according to Suffolk County Registry of Deeds records.
The company Blackston bought the building from had in turn paid $75 million for the building in 2012, according to Registry of Deeds records.
The city currently assesses the building at $86.3 million - down from $91.2 million in 2023.
Neighborhoods:
Topics:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Okay...
So, it's a $76,500,010.00 office building that last sold for $75,000,000.00?
What a Doom Loop we're in!!!
No doom loop, except for in
No doom loop, except for in your math education
No, it last sold for $155.7 million
The sale before that, in 2012, was for $75 million.
It's better than what happened to the Westfield San Francisco Centre but not by a lot. If Blackstone thought the value of the building would recover to more than the balance of the mortgage then they'd probably keep it.
Considering that the value of a dollar today is ~23% less than in 2012 (based on NE region CPI) that building sold for $59 million in 2012 dollars.
How much of a tip do you leave, . . . .
for an eighty million dollar haircut?
Don't be dramatic. We can
Don't be dramatic. We can always raise city taxes.
I'll give them [looks in
I'll give them [looks in wallet] $47 for this building right now.
dammit
I have eleven bucks in my wallet, I didn't know they'd be selling buildings
Why 10?
If this is just a legal symbolic amount, why not $1?
Silly
It's all that out-of-control inflation that certain people are convinced is a thing.
That's just a conveyance.
That's just a conveyance. The entities are the same people. It's not a sale.
No, not the same people
Go to the Secretary of State's corporate look-up page and look up the two LLCs on the deed. One will lead you to a Chicago-based subsidiary of Blackstone, the other will lead you to the head of Synergy, based in Post Office Square.
There is simply not enough
There is simply not enough public information to make the assumption that this was an arm's-legnth transaction. Did anyone do the reporter's job of calling the listed parties and finding out more or are we just now speculating on information on a public database that is known to lack ownership and transaction details?
This looks to me that it may have been part of an M&A deal where there is no purchase price of the individual property but rather a collection of assets and this was one of them all wrapped up in a total purchase price that is not public.
Seems to me
that the burden of proof should be on the person claiming that they're actually the same entity, no?
It's a huge building. Those
It's a huge building. Those five stories take up that entire side of the block. Used to be a cool shop in the basement on the Lincoln Street side that sold ink stamps (remember those) and various other knick-knacks. I'm pretty sure they are long gone since The Leather District became fashionable, i.e. gentrified.
Ooops
That's a good find. I track all the deeds for $2 million+ every day and didn't see that one. (So much for completeness on my part.)
The sale was confirmed by Synergy in a press release so, yes, it's a real sale.
https://bostonrealestatetimes.com/synergy-acquires-179-lincoln-street-in...
BTW, the person typing up the transaction at the Registry incorrectly lists it as for $1.00, not $10 .. that's what you get for voting in the other guy instead of me in 2016!
So if the deed is recorded as $10 (or, $1), then how much is collected in tax stamps? If it were a typical transaction, it would be $4.56 per $1,000, so $93,000 x $4.56 = $424,800 in taxes (plus 2% CPA, etc.) but they may have collected zero. I've only seen one other transaction like this, for a building in the Seaport in the mid-00s where someone bought a billion dollar property for a dollar and didn't pay any taxes. Apparently legal but how? I don't know, I'm not the Registrar!
Regarding the instruments found in the basement, I don't know if they are "long gone" as the commenter lamented. I just read that the (now prior) owner signed an agreement with Historic Boston back when they found artifacts during its "repositioning" so they have been saved maybe? The building itself is safe, I believe.
So is this a trend? Sure and there are other examples but so far I haven't seen a mass sell-off. Presumably, owners are attempting to refinance.
Perhaps we'll stay out of a doom-loop.