Tishman Speyer is selling the 12-story, 155,000-square-foot office building at 148 Lafayette Street in SoHo, at the corner of Lafayette and Howard streets, to Shorenstein Properties for around $135 million. The transaction matters because it represents a quick-turnaround sale at a sizable profit: Tishman purchased the building from Epic in May 2025 for $105.5 million, meaning the sale price reflects a roughly $29.5 million increase in just over a year. The deal also signals continued institutional appetite for fully leased, boutique office assets in Manhattan submarkets that have demonstrated leasing momentum.
The property contains 141,359 square feet of office space that is 100 percent leased to tenants including investment firm General Catalyst, artificial intelligence code review firm Graphite, coworking firm WeWork, cosmetics company Charlotte Tilbury, digital picture frame company Aura Frames, and consulting firm Keystone. An additional 13,454 square feet of retail on the ground and lower floors is also fully leased to martial arts gym Five Points Academy and discount luxury retailer 260 Sample Sale. Around 70 percent of the building's office portion has been leased to new tenants since January 2025, and all but 12,315 square feet of the space is leased up through the 2030s. Rent for the newer leases ranges from $70 to $120 per square foot. The LEED Gold building was built in 1913, with renovations in 2007 and 2017, according to Tishman Speyer.
The sale was first reported by The Real Deal and was repped by Newmark's Adam Spies, Doug Harmon, Adam Doneger, Marcella Fasulo, Avery Silverstein, and Joshua King. Shorenstein outbid several institutional bidders, including private equity funds, for the building, according to a source with knowledge of the deal. Tishman's 2025 acquisition was financed in part with a $68.3 million acquisition loan from Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies. The $105.5 million purchase price in 2025 represented a decline from the $126.5 million Epic paid for the building in 2012, underscoring how office values in the neighborhood had reset before the recent leasing surge. Prior to the 2025 purchase, Tishman had not bought an office building anywhere in the U.S. since 2021, and had not purchased an office building in Manhattan since 2019, according to previous reporting in Commercial Observer.
The transaction fits into a broader pattern of Tishman Speyer activity on the deal front. In August, the company placed the fee simple interest for 6 Grand Central, the former 666 Third Avenue, up for sale for a price of around $450 million. That followed a June announcement that the firm's debt platform had purchased the $40 million mezzanine loan on the Emery Roth & Sons-designed One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, immediately following the 50-story office building's purchase by 601W Companies and David Werner Real Estate Investments. For Shorenstein, the acquisition of a fully leased SoHo asset with leases extending into the 2030s suggests a bet on durable cash flow in a submarket that has attracted technology and creative tenants.
The evidence base for this analysis is limited to a single Commercial Observer article, and several details remain unconfirmed. The exact closing timeline, final pricing adjustments, and the financing structure for Shorenstein's purchase were not disclosed. Tishman Speyer declined to comment, while Shorenstein Properties and Newmark did not immediately respond to requests for comment. What to watch is whether the reported $135 million price holds at closing and whether the new ownership can maintain occupancy as leases roll over in the 2030s.