This Philadelphia office building recently sold for less than half its 2006 sale price
The upper levels of the Center City building are planned to become apartments.
Another Philadelphia office building is slated for partial conversion to residential, as it sells at a deeply discounted rate.
Ten Penn Center, at 1801 Market St., is being sold to PMC Property Group for $30 million, according to a person familiar with the deal who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not have permission to speak to the press.
The last time the 27-story building changed hands, in 2006, city records show it sold for $75 million, or almost $144 million in today’s dollars according to the Bureau of Labor Standards’ inflation calculator.
The property is being sold by the real estate consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), on behalf of Ten Penn Associates (a partnership between New York’s Sterling American Property and West Chester’s Greenville Partners), which purchased the building in 2006.
JLL declined to comment on the sale, and PMC Property Group did not respond to a request for comment.
PMC is one of the city’s largest apartment developers and is well-versed in office-to-residential conversions. Their most recent such project is at Three Parkway (1601 Cherry St.), a 20-story office tower. PMC also converted just half of that building to residential, the lower portion that had housed Drexel’s nursing school.
PMC bought Three Parkway in 2024 for $30 million, less than a third of what it sold for in 2017. The redevelopment is already complete, and many residents have already moved into the 143 units.
According to JLL’s listing, 1801 Market’s offices are still 65% occupied. The building is divided in two by the 16th floor, which is largely mechanical. The upper floors had previously been occupied by the law firm Morgan Lewis, which has since moved to its own building. Vacancy is concentrated in those levels, which are planned to be converted to residential.
It is not known what number of apartments PMC plans.
The deeply discounted sale of 1801 Market is part of a recent post-COVID trend in Philadelphia office sales. These kinds of commercial properties began to change hands last year, following a pandemic-era real estate freeze, but they’ve been selling at very low prices.