Savanna Picks Up 444 Madison Avenue for $50M

Everyone loves a discount, and real estate investment manager Savanna is no exception.

The company, in a partnership with Summit Properties, is currently in talks to acquire the leasehold on the 401,686-square-foot office building at 444 Madison Avenue for $50 million, making it the third property the company will have acquired over the past nine months.

The Real Deal was first to report the story.

Westbrook Partners, the building’s owner, bought the lease on the building for $314 million in 2007. The company has since defaulted on its $120 million loan on the building from Wells Fargo, which placed the loan up for sale in December 2024. At that point, the 42-story building was 52 percent leased, according to previous reporting from Commercial Observer. If purchased, the buyer could have claimed the property through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure.

But Wells Fargo decided to sell the property, accepting a discounted payoff through a short sale.

Adam Spies and Adam Doneger from Newmark led the team that negotiated the sale.

Savanna has been on a bit of a discount shopping spree. 

The company acquired 799 Broadway for $255 million in November 2024 after the building’s owner, Columbia Property Trust, defaulted on its $270 million mortgage. Savanna then bought the leasehold for 430 West 15th Street — which had sold to Invesco for $159 million in 2018 — for just $85 million in February 2025, according to TRD.

444 Madison was home to luxury fashion brand Burberry’s main headquarters from 2009 to 2022 and had the company’s name displayed on three sides, a perk still available to new tenants, as reported in CO. The ground lease can potentially be extended by its owner, the Kandell family, to 2089.

Savanna, Wells Fargo, and Westbrook did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Larry Getlen can be reached at lgetlen@commercialobserver.com.