FAIRFAX, VA-Malvern, PA-based Liberty Property Trust recently sold off an office park here for $31.5 million. This sale preceded a much larger portfolio trade last week that included Maryland office assets. These two transactions represent the REIT's decision to concentrate on its core industrial holdings with only a narrow interest in certain office markets and properties.

The Fairfax property, the Pender Business Park, is located at 3922, 3924, 3926 and 3928 Pender Drive, and totals 171,000 square feet. It was the nationwide portfolio sale, however, that turned heads last week: that sale consisted 97 mostly office properties--23 of which are in Maryland--and 159 acres of land for about $705 million. It did not identify the buyer in the deal, which is expected to close in stages between the final months of 2013 and early 2014.

The 6.6 million square foot portfolio consists of four million square feet of office, 2.3 million square feet of flex space and 274,000 square feet of industrial. It includes the entirety of Liberty's Jacksonville, FL portfolio, which comprises 32 of the 97 properties.

Also included are all 24 of Liberty's office assets in Southern New Jersey, the six it owns in the Fort Washington submarket of Philadelphia, and a dozen flex properties in Minnesota.

"This transaction furthers our strategy to increase our portfolio allocation to industrial real estate and to concentrate our office portfolio in fewer focused markets," says William P. Hankowsky, the REIT's chairman and CEO.

It is little secret Liberty has developed an appetite for industrial assets: Four weeks ago, it completed its $1.475-billion buy of the operating assets of Cabot Industrial Value Fund III. However, Hankowsky made clear the REIT is not completely abandoning the office asset class, even as it approaches it differently. The recent sales, he said, should enhance the REIT's "ability to exploit our expertise in creating and managing high-quality office environments in which we can create significant future value."