In 2007, Jared Kushner persuaded his family group to purchase an Eisenhower-era office building on New York’s Fifth Avenue for a then record-setting $1.8 billion, financed by $1.215 billion in commercial mortgage bonds. The deal almost instantly went catastrophically wrong. Occupancy dropped in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008. Rents collapsed. Things did not improve for the Kushners’ 666 Fifth Avenue property during the recovery. The business locus of New York shifted west and south, away from Fifth Avenue, and often out of Manhattan entirely.
