HOUSTON-ACRON Group of Tulsa has sold the 194,191-square-foot Reserve at Westchase to State Farm Insurance Co. Financial details of the transaction were undisclosed, with the Harris Central Appraisal District assessing the 1999-built, class A office building at $21.3 million.

Though the property at 3250 Briarpark Dr. in the Westchase submarket was 100% occupied, CBRE's Bernard Branca, who teamed with colleagues Jared Chua and Russell Ingrum to represented the seller,  indicated the difficulty of the transaction. One main issue, he points out in a press release, was the property's existing CMBS loan, which required an assumption.

"The rating agencies conducted a survey to see how long it was taking to approve a CMBS assumption and found on average, it was taking 120 days from the day the servicer got all the paperwork to the final approval (not closing of the deal, but just approvals). So, add another 30 – 60 days on for legal closing and you can see why it takes 6 months or longer to close a CMBS assumption," Branca explains in the release. "State Farm's team was extraordinary in obtaining, organizing and processing the servicer's required due diligence.  As such we were able to obtain approval from the loan servicer after 44 days of making loan assumption application which allowed us to close before the end of the year.”

With the sale, ACRON puts an end to its six-year hold on the building.

In an unrelated story, Branca, Chua and Ingrum were also busy in The Woodlands, just north of Houston, in brokering a sale-leaseback of the 152,933-square-foot headquarters of Tetra Technologies Inc. The three-year-old office building is at 24955 Interstate 45 North.