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Get out your Stravinsky violins.
Some of Manhattan’s wealthiest renters are about to be evicted, as the owner of their already luxury building wants to develop even more high-end homes.
When Miki Naftali agreed last year to pay north of $800 million for 800 Fifth Ave. — the Bernard Spitzer-built tower that has anchored the corner of Fifth and 61st Street since 1978 — he set in motion one of the more unusual displacement events in recent New York real estate history.
In order to redevelop the building, he’s evicting tenants from all 208 units who already pay some of the highest rents in the country — and they’re not happy
Good cause eviction protections are unlikely to apply at rent levels this high.
All apartments must be vacated by year’s end; the leasing office went dark last August. And Naftali’s firm, working with architect Robert A.M. Stern, is moving toward a partial demolition of the existing 33-story tower to make way for a 26-story, 330-foot limestone condominium that promises to be among the most expensive addresses ever built in Manhattan.
Stern’s signature prewar-inflected design, with arched windows, dentil-trim cornices and terraced upper setbacks, will rise directly across from Central Park.
For those being shown the door, the vision is considerably less inspiring.
“I’ve lived here for over 10 years. I love the neighborhood. If it were up to me, I would never leave,” one tenant, who asked not to be identified, told The Post. “I’ve been trying to find something similar, but have to look a little further east, which has been a pain.
“There is nothing, and I mean nothing, for rent around here.”
The tenants at 800 Fifth were not paying cheap rent, either. One-bedrooms ran around $9,000 a month; larger units climbed to $30,000. These are people with means — many of whom have lived in the building for a decade or more and chose renting precisely because it suited their lifestyle. Now they are learning, in real time, that Fifth Avenue simply does not have a rental market to speak of.
Keyan Sanai, a top rental broker at Douglas Elliman who has fielded a surge of calls from displaced residents, has watched the scramble up close. The problem, he says, is not purely financial.
“It’s not how much more they could pay. It’s a matter of, does it exist? If you go up on Fifth Avenue, in what we’ll call the prime area, there’s only one other rental building, 945 Fifth Ave., that the Rudins operate,” Sanai told The Post. “So now, regardless of whether they’re willing to up their budget $5,000 to $10,000 to $15,000, they have to look elsewhere.”
The Rudin family’s 945 Fifth, long regarded as the gold standard among Fifth Avenue rental buildings, has been overwhelmed.
“I get phone calls, and they go, ‘Hey, can you help me? I need to move.’ I go, ‘Let me guess, 800 Fifth?’ They’re like, ‘Yeah.’ I said, ‘Did you call 945 Fifth Ave.?’ They go, ‘Yeah, there’s like a five-year waiting list now.’ Because people scrambled. So now those people are broadening their search.”
What’s upsetting the Fifth Avenue devotees even more is that even the empty apartments on the prime address — owned or leased by second-homers who rarely use them — are out of reach
“There’s a lot of the co-ops on Fifth that don’t even allow you to sublet,” Sanai said.
“We actually see this on the other side of the park as well. Central Park West. There are three buildings that are rental buildings. So even if you wanted to spend $125 grand a month, you can’t live in The San Remo, for example. It’s a beautiful building with the two towers. You can’t live in it. There’s no supply. You cannot rent your apartment out.”
For those who do find available apartments, the pricing has been eye-opening. One unit at Fasano Fifth Avenue, a private members club offering short-term turnkey rentals, went for $175,000 a month. Last December, an apartment at The Benson at 1045 Madison Ave. was leased for $95,000 a month.
The sale itself has quietly raised eyebrows across the industry.
“Everyone is pretty shocked. Who in their right mind would sell a piece of real estate on Fifth Avenue that has that kind of income coming?” Sanai said.
“It was such a rare building to begin with, to have a rental building in that location. And they could practically ask almost whatever they wanted, especially recently with the rental market.”
“As new owners of 800 Fifth Avenue, we have been in consistent communication with outgoing residents throughout this transition,” a spokesperson for Naftali’s team told The Real Deal. “We are making progress toward our investment in the building and look forward to sharing more about our vision for this property.”
Meanwhile, on East 51st Street, a unit at 351 drew multiple offers, two of them from 800 Fifth residents.
“They said if we can’t live on Fifth Avenue, we at least want a really good apartment, and at least we could just pull out to the FDR quicker and get to our home in Rhinebeck,” Sanai said.
“People want to be near Fifth but they understand it’s not feasible.”
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