A Midtown condo known for its discretion has sold a unit to a purchaser who seems unconcerned about remaining unknown.
Terence Chan — chairman of Bay Area Capital Partners, a Hong Kong private equity firm that invests in real estate developments — has purchased a four-bedroom apartment at Aman New York for $61.6 million, according to a deed that appeared in the city register last Wednesday.
Chan signed the deed himself, a rarity at any high-end building where shell companies are the coin of the realm but especially so at Aman, a 26-unit boutique project at 730 Fifth Ave. whose buyers all remain virtually unknown.
No. 24A, which closed Jan. 30, went into contract in October 2018, soon after the project began its marketing campaign. Closings began in the summer of 2022. OKO Group and Shvo co-developed the tower, a hotel-and-condo hybrid at West 57th Street. The condo units are on floors that sit atop an 83-room hotel that is the New York City outpost of the global Aman hospitality chain.
The marketing of the condos has taken place under the radar, so the look of Chan’s new apartment remains something of a mystery. But what is known because of the condo’s offering plan is that the home has four bedrooms, five baths and a home office across about 6,300 square feet. What it does not have, however, is a terrace, unlike about a half-dozen of the units there.
Aman has five units left to sell, including the tower’s 12,500-square-foot penthouse, records show.
Previous sales have been brisk and easily exceeded the median Manhattan sale price of just above $2 million for new condos, according to Douglas Elliman’s fourth-quarter numbers.
Indeed, 10 of Aman’s 21 sold apartments have traded for more than $20 million — with the steepest being the $76 million spent for No. 20A, a three-bedroom, in July 2022, according to the register. Chan’s purchase appears to be the second-priciest deal so far. The least-expensive trade has been $4.6 million for No. 15B, a 430-square-foot studio.
Remaining are Nos. 16B, 16C, 23A, 25A and 26A, which is the penthouse. Developers tend to market condos from the bottom to the top, with the harder-to-sell lower-floor units getting attention right out of the gate.
Chan — who holds a Ph.D. in economics, according to an online resume — also invests in infrastructure, green energy and financial technology and claims to have raised more than $3 billion from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority and other sovereign wealth funds.
Prepandemic, Chinese buyers made up a large part of the luxury condo market, though COVID restrictions and the anti-immigrant rhetoric of the Trump administration soured Asian buyers on New York, brokers say. Of course, Chan signed his deal in 2018, so it may be more representative of the prepandemic era than any new overseas investment trend.