David Werner is doing one of the things he does best: flipping deals.
The investor is in talks to sell the office floors at 300 East 42nd Street, only a few months after he went into contract for $52 million, sources told The Real Deal.
The building fronts an entire block of Second Avenue between East 42nd and East 41st streets and has three retail spaces with about 7,300 square feet on the ground floor. Werner’s plan is to buy the retail portion of the 18-story building and flip the office floors above for essentially the same price he agreed to pay for the entire property.
Werner is said to be in talks with several potential buyers, including a high-net-worth individual from Latin America. A representative for Werner could not be reached for comment.
His David Werner Real Estate went into contract earlier this year to buy the 235,000-square-foot building from Fortress Investment Group, which took the property back from Keith Rubenstein’s Somerset Partners and Jeffrey Kaplan’s Meadow Partners back in 2023.
The previous owners had bought the building in 2019 for $122.5 million, making Werner’s contract a nearly 60 percent discount off that price.
The deal is a quintessential example of the David Werner playbook. The prolific investor is known for tying up properties and then flipping them to his investors, sometimes rolling his profit back into the deal as equity.
In 2004, Crain’s called him the “King of the quick flip.”
Werner is also known for opening up his checkbook when prices are low. Over the past two years, he’s been one of the most active buyers, snapping up buildings at hefty discounts.
Last year, he teamed up with Lloyd Goldman’s BLDG to buy the office building at 100 Wall Street for $115 million — a deep discount to the $270 million the seller Barings paid in 2015. It’s one of several office-to-resi conversions Werner is working on.
He also bought 40 Fulton Street in 2022 for $101 million after the seller, Vornado Realty Trust, had been eyeing at least $130 million for the property. In Chicago, he teamed up with 601W in January to buy the distressed office building at 303 East Wacker for $63 million. The 30-story building previously sold for $182 million in 2018.
Werner is working with Nathan Berman’s Metro Loft Management to convert the former Pfizer headquarters at 235 East 42nd Street into 1,600 apartments — the largest-ever office-to-residential conversion.
The two are also planning to convert the 340,000-square-foot office building at 675 Third Avenue, which they signed a contract in January to buy from the Durst Organization for more than $100 million.
Read more
David Werner snaps up another big bargain with $52M Midtown deal
David Werner snags Durst’s 675 Third for $100M
David Werner, Metro Loft land $135M loan for Pfizer HQ conversion
