Landmark Phelan building sold in San Francisco for $375 million

NEW YORK (Reuters) - New York-based developer Thor Equities has sold the historic Phelan building in San Francisco for $375 million to a member of the prominent Hotung family with deep roots in Hong Kong, sources said.

A limited liability company, The Phelan Building LLC, has purchased the 11-story landmark at 760 Market Street, according to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Chinese investors pumped $17 billion into U.S. commercial property in the first five months of this year, on pace to surpass the record $21.4 billion in 2015, Cushman & Wakefield said. Half of the investment this year has been in office buildings and majority of the remainder in hotels, C&W said.

Cushman & Wakefield represented the buyer.

Thor Equities through one of its two urban property funds purchased the building in 2008 for $130 million and spent $40 million renovating the site by creating wide-open floor space from the small offices that jewelers had occupied.

The time was right to sell the building, said Thor Equities chief executive Joseph Sitt in a statement.

Office tenants at the building include online credit site Credit Karma and Medium, an online publishing platform founded by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams.

The triangular-shaped building is reminiscent of the Flatiron building in New York and was built after the original structure was destroyed by the fire in the 1906 earthquake.

(This story has been refiled to clarify that buyer only has historic ties to Hong Kong.)

(Reporting by Herbert Lash; Editing by Alistair Bell and Clive McKeef)