Brookfield Refis 245 Park for $800M

NEW YORK CITY-Brookfield Office Properties has refinanced its 1.6-million-square-foot tower at 245 Park Ave. for $800 million, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The loan for the 44-story office property is reportedly the largest to date from the Bank of China’s New York branch, as well as the one of the largest loans from any source since the economic downturn began.

The WSJ noted that Industrial & Commercial Bank of China Ltd., China’s largest bank by assets, began year rolling out a “large-loan” program earlier this year, aimed at US commercial real-estate owners that needed loans exceeding $100 million. China Investment Corp., the $300-billion sovereign-wealth fund, also seeks to put cash into domestic real estate through investing with US property-fund managers, according to the WSJ.

A source in the life insurance industry told GlobeSt.com this past summer that BOP had sought to syndicate an $800-million refinancing on a Manhattan office tower through life companies, on grounds that no one insurer had a large enough allocation to make such a loan on its own. BOP's spokeswoman on Thursday confirmed the refi through Bank of China, saying it was a seven-year deal at 3.88%, but declined to comment on the syndication scenario.

However, such large-scale refis from multiple sources are beginning to happen again. At a panel discussion presented last month by the Real Estate Board of New York, Jonathan Durst, president of the Durst Organization, cited his company’s securitized $1.3-billion refi of the Bank of America Tower at 1 Bryant Park. That deal, financed in part by one of the largest CMBS issues of the past two years, got done this past July only after the Durst Organization obtained a short-term refi a year earlier from a group mainly comprised of the project’s construction lenders, he said. With the help of BofA, Durst’s partner and anchor tenant at the 2.4-million-square-foot office tower, a $650-million securitization was completed in a deal that also involved a similarly-sized issue of Liberty Bonds.

Click here for the WSJ article on the BOP deal.