BLOOMINGDALE, IL-Wells Core Office Income REIT, affiliated with Atlanta-based Wells Real Estate Funds, has purchased the 71,000-square-foot Midwest office headquarters for Bridgestone Firestone Inc.’s retail operation here. Hamilton Partners sold the building to the non-traded REIT for $11.5 million.

Bridgestone occupies most of the building, along with smaller tenants Pacific Life Insurance and State Farm Insurance. The property was built in 2001, and is in the Northwest submarket of Chicago, where rents run about $23 per square foot for class A properties. Bridgestone has a lease until 2018 at the building.

This is the second purchase by the new office REIT, which was formed in September. In October, the trust paid $18 million for a 120,000-square-foot building in Irving, TX, fully leased to JP Morgan Chase Bank N.A. Joe Oglesby with Wells says the trust has been raising equity for five months, and will build momentum in future purchases. “We’re still targeting the $15 million to $30 million range, but that will probably go up next year as we start raising additional monies,” he tells GlobeSt.com.

Oglesby says the trust, like many office buyers out there today, seeks core properties with credit worthy tenants and long-term leases in major markets. “It’s an interesting time to be a buyer, there’s a lot of money chasing core buildings that are well-leased, there are lot of people looking for yield, and it’s very hard to underwrite vacancy or short-term leases. I guess you could say that in the class A market, it’s not a bad time to be a seller,” he says.