CHICAGO—Continuing the culling process implemented by chairman Sam Zell, Equity Commonwealth said Monday afternoon it had completed three more sales worth a combined $261 million. The Chicago-based REIT also completed a two-building portfolio sale last month on its home turf that was worth a combined $376 million, according to industry reports.
EQC did not identify the buyers in the three separate deals, which involved office properties in upstate New York, the United Healthcare Center in Hartford, CT and One Franklin Plaza in Philadelphia. Largest of the deals by square footage was the 11-property portfolio in the Rochester, NY and Syracuse, NY metro areas, totaling two million square feet. It was 79.8% leased as of June 30, and traded for $104.6 million.
Real Capital Analytics says the United Healthcare property at 185 Asylum Ct. in Hartford sold for $113.3 million to Paradigm Capital. The 885,000-square-foot property is currently 99% occupied; EQC's predecessor, CommonWealth REIT, paid $99 million to acquire it in March 2012, RCA data show.
The deal for the 609,000-square-foot One Franklin Plaza closed in August, with PMC Property Group paying $43 million, according to RCA. EQC says the property is currently vacant. Also in August, EQC traded the 2.1-million-square-foot, two-building Illinois Center office complex in Chicago to AmTrust Realty, according to RCA data. The complex is 71.6% occupied, according to an EQC investor presentation; at 5% it has the lowest cap rate of any of EQC's recent office trades, the presentation states.
Year to date, EQC has exited 61 cities, four states and the Australian market, according to its investor presentation. It has disposed of $1.7 billion in assets since the beginning of 2015, with a goal of selling up to $3 billion.
Disposing of non-core assets is one of four strategic priorities EQC has identified. The others include leasing and operating with an entrepreneurial focus, continuing to improve the balance sheet and opportunistically allocating capital to enhance NAV over time.
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Paul Bubny
Paul Bubny is managing editor of Real Estate Forum and GlobeSt.com. He has been reporting on business since 1988 and on commercial real estate since 2007. He is based at ALM Real Estate Media Group's offices in New York City.
