Rockville Corporate Center Trades for $49M

(Mark Your Calendars. The 11^th Annual RealShare Washington, DC convenes at the Ritz Carlton, June 1.)  

ROCKVILLE, MD-Corporate Office Properties Trust continues to shore up its balance sheet  via its strategic reallocation plan. The REIT has sold two buildings and a plot of land here—its Rockville Corporate Center—for a net $48.7 million. The property totals 222,000 square feet and is fully leased.

COPT has been recycling assets in its portfolio, selling off non-core properties in order to focus on its primary strategy of targeting government agencies and users, since 2011. Last year, the REIT announced the plan by emphasizing its need to build capital for its BRAC and other government-related initiatives. As 2011 came to a close, though, it also became clear the REIT still had some right-sizing to do to its balance sheet.

Since the start of the year, COPT has sold a total of $116.9 million of properties and land. The sale of this aggregate 537,000 square feet of properties netted the REIT $109.7 million. In the past 12 months it has sold a total of $193.5 million of properties and land, totaling approximately 1.4 million operational square feet. It has realized net proceeds of $179.3 million all together.

These sales represent 20.7% of COPT’s total leases but only 6.5% of its consolidated operating square feet in place at the time the strategic plan was announced, a little more than a year ago. Today, “We continue to improve our overall portfolio quality by disposing of non-strategic assets,” says Roger A. Waesche, Jr., president and CEO, in a prepared statement.