2000 M St. Trades for $74M

ROCKVILLE, MD-Washington Real Estate Investment Trust closed two days ago on a 100% occupied office building in the Central Business District. 2000 M St. traded for $73.5 million. WRIT did not provide the name of the seller; however, local comps show that Juster Properties owned the building prior to its sale.

The property is leased to 21 tenants. With some 227,000 net rentable sf and 375 parking spaces, WRIT is expecting to achieve a first-year, unleveraged yield of 6.2% on a cash basis and 6.7% on a GAAP basis, according to a statement by the company. The acquisition was funded with proceeds from a 1031 exchange and borrowings on WRIT’s line of credit.

CFO Sara Grootwassink tells GlobeSt.com that the company plans to leverage upcoming turnover in the building as many of the tenants are paying below market rents. “There is a well balanced maturity of leases: 20,000 sf are maturing in 2008 and 91,000 sf are maturing in 2011,” she says.

WRIT has been on an acquisition spree for well over a year. Much of its office portfolio has been focused on medical buildings–indeed, the firm owns a medical office building on the same block as its newest acquisition. A class A facility, WRIT acquired 2440 M St. for $50 million.

Other medical office holdings include the four-building Shady Grove/Plumtree Medical Portfolio, which it acquired for $67 million, in Rockville, and the Woodholme Medical Office Building and Woodholme Center, acquired for $49 million, also in Rockville.

Recently WRIT acquired a small parcel of land with an eye to developing it as well into a medical office facility. The 0.8-acre parcel of land is located at 4661 Kenmore Ave. in Alexandria, VA.