WASHINGTON, DC-Somerset Partners is putting 1801 K St., NW, on the market. The New York Citu-based company has owned the CBD office since 2005, when it picked it up for $271 million.

Jones Lang LaSalle will be marketing the property. Bill Prutting declined to say what the whisper price, or even if there is a whisper price ("we prefer to have investors reach their own conclusions about price") but does expect it to attract pricing at the top end of the Washington office market.

Core office buildings are trading at cap rates of 4.5 and four and three quarters, he notes.

"Somerset's goal in acquiring 1801 K was to reposition the building and put it back on the market as one of the city's highest quality assets," he tells GlobeSt.com.

The 13-story, 569,769-square-foot building was renovated in 2010 and last year received LEED Gold certification from USGBC. It boasts such tenants as Nordstrom Rack and KPMG. Indeed that is one of its selling points, Prutting says--no law firms, at least not any law firms taking up a significant amount of space.

It does have a key Washington tenant though – the government, namely the Federal Reserve, which inked a major lease for the building at the end of the year. "The Federal Reserve lease was an important transaction," Prutting says. "It showed the Somerset Partners is a smart hands-on owner operator."

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Erika Morphy

Erika Morphy has been writing about commercial real estate at GlobeSt.com for more than ten years, covering the capital markets, the Mid-Atlantic region and national topics. She's a nerd so favorite examples of the former include accounting standards, Basel III and what Congress is brewing.