Investors pick up Gables offices for $8M

The office building at 1701 Ponce De Leon Boulevard

The same investors who recently sold an apartment building in Little Havana just paid $8.15 million for an office building in Coral Gables.

Veneto Group, which is managed by Alejandro and Sergio Villamizar, purchased the five-story office building at 1701 Ponce De Leon Boulevard through a deed filed Friday.

The two paid nearly $170 per square foot for the 48,006-square-foot building, which was constructed in 1972 and is primarily occupied by Simply Healthcare Plans.

It was sold by Yeung Property Holdings, a Florida company managed by the Yeung family of investors. Their address also leads back to the International Restaurant Management Group, of which Hoi-Sang Yeung is President. That company has founded several restaurant concepts like Kelly’s Cajun Grill, Yeung’s Lotus Express, Suki Hana, and Chicken Connection.

Yeung Property Holdings first purchased the Gables office building for $8.65 million, or $180 per square foot, in 2006. That means the company sold it for about $500,000 less than what they paid nine years ago.

According to a LoopNet listing, only 27,997 square feet of the building are rentable: four floors are dedicated offices, while the first floor and basement level house parking for 42 vehicles.

Last week, Veneto Group also closed on the sale of an apartment building in Little Havana for $13.5 million. The investors sold the property to a New York firm called Burke Leighton Asset Management, which is steadily increasing its rental portfolio in Miami.