Paramount Group CEO gets $12M for Upper East Side duplex

Albert Behler spent 17 years cobbling apartment together

Albert Behler, ceo, REIT Paramount Group (Getty Images, Douglas Elliman)
Albert Behler, ceo, REIT Paramount Group (Getty Images, Douglas Elliman)

Albert Behler, the CEO of office-management firm Paramount Group, has cashed in an Upper East Side apartment he pieced together over 17 years.

The executive sold his 5,500-square-foot duplex at 1080 Fifth Avenue in Carnegie Hill for $12.1 million, property records show.

Behler spent $9.3 million acquiring the apartment that overlooks the Central Park reservoir. He first bought a unit on the 15th floor in 2005 for $2.5 million. In 2009 he acquired a full-floor unit directly above for $4.3 million and in 2014 nabbed another 15th-floor unit for $2.5 million.

The Atlas Delaware Trust, represented by Monica Ahdoot of Corcoran Group, bought the four contiguous units on the 15th and 16th floors from him at the end of December, records show. Sabrina Saltiel of Douglas Elliman represented the seller.

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Behler boasted as early as October 2020 that Paramount employees were back in the office. Daily occupancy rates at corporate offices remain stubbornly low in New York and San Francisco — 23.2 and 19.7 percent, respectively — as of Jan. 26, according to Kastle Systems. A majority of Paramount’s Class A office buildings are in the two cities.

The “flight to quality” in the office market has benefited Paramount and its 13.9 million square feet of assets. Approximately 90 percent of its office space is leased or in contract to be, according to the company’s latest earnings report.

The sale hardly leaves Behler without a roof over his head. He bought a unit at 220 Central Park South in February 2019 for $33.5 million.