New suburban building sells for $32 million
Crain's Chicago Business reports: A New York investment firm paid $32 million for the new North American headquarters of a Japanese company, a sign of rebounding demand for well-leased properties in good locations.
An affiliate of W. P. Carey & Co. paid about $314 a square foot for the 102,000-square-foot office and warehouse at 2400 Huntington Blvd. in northwest suburban Hoffman Estates. The recently completed two-story building was built for machine tool maker Mori Seiki USA Inc., which has a 20-year lease.
The buyer is the same Carey investment vehicle that last year bought Kendall College’s Goose Island campus in a nearly $28-million sale/leaseback deal.
The Hoffman Estates transaction may be a sign that investment activity is starting to pick up after a long drought.
“People are smelling the bottom,” says Jim Carpenter, a senior director in the Chicago office of Cushman & Wakefield Inc., which brokered the sale. “Equity capital for good properties is growing.”
The seller was a joint venture of Rosemont-based McShane Cos. and MetLife Real Estate Investments.
The all-cash deal, which closed Monday, is notable because so few suburban office properties have traded hands this year as rising vacancies, declining values and a lack of available credit have kept investors on the sidelines.
During the first three quarters of 2009, just 18 office properties totaling $337 million were sold in the Chicago area, according to New York research firm Real Capital Analytics Inc. Last year during the same period, 47 properties totaling a little more than $2 billion had been sold.
W. P. Carey has nearly $10 billion in global real estate holdings. The Carey affiliate that bought the Mori Seiki building, called CPA:17 - Global, specializes in single-tenant properties.
“We feel this acquisition is a strong addition to our portfolio,” W. P. Carey Managing Director Gino Sabatini says in a statement.
Mori Seiki USA’s headquarters is part of the 70-acre Huntington Woods Corporate Center, near Interstate 90 and Barrington Road. McShane and MetLife Real Estate acquired the park in June 2008.
View the full article on Crain's Chicago Business: New suburban building sells for $32 million
Posted by: Nina Turner