Forest City Sells Properties in FL, CA

    CLEVELAND – Forest City Enterprise Inc. said it recently completed the disposition of two assets in its non-core markets which generated $73.3 million in net cash proceeds.

   In Florida, the firm closed the sale of Emerald Palms, a 505-unit apartment community in the Kendall/South Dade submarket in southwest Miami, to Grand Peaks Properties for about $70.5 million. The sale reflected a cap rate of approximately 5.0% based on estimated 2012 net operating income. The disposition generated net cash proceeds to Forest City of about $45.2 million.    In California, Forest City completed the sale of Fairmont Plaza, a 17-story, 405,000-square-foot downtown office building in San Jose, to CBRE Global Investors for nearly $93.1 million. This represented a cap rate of around 7.0% based on estimated 2012 net operating income.  The sale generated net cash proceeds to Forest City of approximately $28.1 million.    ”We continue to execute on our strategy of focusing on our primary core markets – New York, Washington DC, Boston, Denver, Dallas, Los Angeles and San Francisco,” David J. LaRue, Forest City president and chief executive officer, says in a press release.    Since the beginning of its fiscal 2012, Forest City has completed 12 dispositions, generating more than $125 million in net cash proceeds.     ”We will use liquidity from dispositions such as these to continue to reduce debt and improve our balance sheet, invest in our mature portfolio and activate entitled development opportunities in core markets,” says LaRue.    Forest City is an NYSE-listed national real estate company with $10.7 billion in total assets.