New York REIT, which will be listed under the symbol NYRT, has diversified in Manhattan by buying in submarkets that have good growth potential, said Woody Heller, an investment-sales broker at Studley, which arranged the purchase of an office building on West 38th Street for Schorsch’s company.

Among the landlord’s properties is 218 W. 18th St., an office building in midtown south, the area where demand from technology firms has helped tighten vacancies and push up rents. The 166,000-square-foot property is 84 percent occupied.

Buying real estate in New York isn’t without risk. Office- building values in Midtown fell 55 percent from the highs of the commercial-property boom to the bottom in 2009, according to an index by Newport Beach, California-based research firm Green Street Advisors Inc. The gauge has gained back most of those losses, coming within 9 percent of its 2007 peak last month.

Shareholder Liquidity

REITs performed poorly in the real estate crash and recession, including those focused on New York. SL Green, the city’s largest office landlord, is trading 36 percent below its February 2007 peak of $156.10. The Bloomberg REIT index has lost about 21 percent since then.

Nontraded REITs, which mainly attract money from individual investors, have a finite life and eventually have to provide liquidity to shareholders. That can happen through a sale of the company or a stock-exchange listing.

American Realty Capital Healthcare Trust Inc., an owner of senior housing, medical-office buildings and hospitals, began trading on April 7 on the Nasdaq Global Select Market after starting out as a nonlisted REIT sponsored by AR Capital.

Schorsch is also chairman of American Realty Capital Properties Inc., which first sold shares to the public in September 2011 and had a stock-market value of $67 million at the end of that month. Through acquisitions, the company grew to become the biggest U.S. landlord of single-tenant buildings -- those leased to businesses such as drugstores and fast-food restaurants -- with a market value of $10 billion.

Spinoff Planned

American Realty Capital Properties plans to spin off to shareholders its multitenant shopping center business, which will own 11.8 million square feet of properties initially. The new publicly traded company, American Realty Capital Centers Inc., will seek to expand through individual and portfolio purchases as well as mergers and acquisitions, according to David Kay, president of American Realty Capital Properties.