Willis Tower Owners Ask: Would You Like to Own Part or All of America's Tallest Building?
Bloomberg reports: Though it feels like just yesterday that a group of New York investors – including the Moinian Group, the Chetrit Group, and American Landmark Properties – purchased Chicago’s infamous Sears Tower, in fact it was over six years ago during the previous investment cycle – back when “bailout” still referred strictly to boats. At that time, the partnership paid $841 million for America’s tallest building, according to Real Capital Analytics. The 110-story property’s name changes to the Willis Tower in 2009 after the space’s third largest leaseholder, Willis Group Holdings Inc.
It was recently announced that the partnership, even at this early point coming out of a downturn, is seeking either another partner to take an equity stake in the tower, or sell the property altogether. Though it is true that pricing and the pace of transactions for trophy office towers in the nation’s leading cities have improved markedly over the past year, assets such as the Willis Tower generally sit in a class of their own. Nonetheless, of the partnership’s announced intentions, RCA Managing Director Dan Fasulo told Bloomberg that, “This is a great sign of how liquidity is returning to the marketplace, that this ownership group thinks the market can digest an asset of this size…Usually you see an asset of this size come to market at the end of a cycle, not the beginning.”
Bloomberg cited the Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Price Index to state that, “Prices for so-called trophy office buildings in six U.S. cities -- New York, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago -- were up 23 percent in March from their July 2009 low.”
View the full article on Bloomberg: Willis Tower Owners Ask: Would You Like to Own Part or All of America's Tallest Building?
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Posted by: Nina Turner