RCA in the commercial property press:

AIG Near $1 Billion Tokyo Tower Sale to Nippon Life

Bloomberg reports: American International Group Inc. is close to selling its Tokyo headquarters building to Nippon Life Insurance Co., Japan’s largest life insurer, for about $1 billion, a person familiar with the situation said.

An agreement for the 15-story tower in central Tokyo’s Marunouchi district may be announced as early as next week, the person said. Negotiations are continuing, said the person, who declined to be identified because the talks are private.

The property is in the most expensive office district in Japan, next to the Imperial Palace, making a potential sale a benchmark for commercial real estate prices. AIG, based in New York, is selling property and businesses after being bailed out four times by the U.S. government. The company has tapped about $45.5 billion from a U.S. credit line as of last week.

“It doesn’t sound like a distressed price,” said Peter Slatin, editorial director of Real Capital Analytics Inc., a New York-based firm that tracks commercial property sales. “If you compare that to the big asset sales we’ve had in the U.S. this year like One Beacon, and Hancock and 1540 Broadway, it sounds like a premium to those.”