Real Estate Roundup 10.21.20 – Real Estate Daily Beat

Real Estate Roundup:

National Acquisitions Roundup 

• Blackstone has agreed to purchase an office complex in Silicon Valley that’s leased to Roku for $275 million. The two buildings are part of a project called Coleman Highline, a new development that’s walking distance to a Caltrain station and the stadium where Major League Soccer’s San Jose Earthquakes play. The purchase price translates to roughly $770 per SF. (Bloomberg)

• The Stro Cos. has purchased a fully occupied, 78,000-square-foot industrial property in Fairfield for an undisclosed price. The property, located at 140 Clinton Road, is home to two tenants and sits directly along Route 46, offering quick access to interstates 80, 280 and 287, among other highways. (RENJ)

• Realterm US Inc. has acquired a property under renovation for use by Amazon from Bridge Development Partners for $81 million. The Torrance, CA property is located at 2751 Skypark Drive, and consists of 118,000 of warehouse space, with 12,500 SF will be set aside as an office and reception area. (LABJ)

National Financing Roundup

• AvalonBay has secured a $167 million construction loan from a syndicate led by Bank of America for its 475-unit multifamily project in Downtown L.A.’s Arts District. The development sits on a 3.75-acre site at 668 S. Alameda Street, and will also have roughly 60,000 SF of commercial space. (LABJ)

Retail 

• Starwood Retail Partners is giving up on the nearly 1 million-square-foot Louis Joliet Mall in Chicago, handing over the keys to its lender after first defaulting on a loan payment in the spring. The move comes two months after parent company Starwood Capital Group lost control of a seven-property regional mall portfolio. The landlord is reportedly in negotiations for a deed in lieu of foreclosure or a foreclosure sale. (TRD)

• In a regulatory filing made public Tuesday, AMC said it will be selling 15 million Class A shares in an offering valued at approximately $45 million. The firm estimates that on September 30 it had $417.9 million in cash and cash equivalents—an amount that “would be largely depleted” by the end of 2020 or early 2021 without any additional sources of liquidity. Last Tuesday, AMC disclosed in a regulatory filing that it resumed operations at 494 of its 598 U.S. theaters with limited seating capacities of between 20% and 40%. (Forbes)

• With outdoor space at a premium, shopping malls and garages are opening their parking lots to tenants and other vendors for open-air stores and other events. At a time when most brick-and-mortar retail is suffering, landlords are grateful for anything that brings in any additional revenue or foot traffic. Some use lots for public-service functions like job fairs, voting stations and drive-through Covid-19 testing. Others have become gathering spots for trivia or bingo games where participants play from their cars. (WSJ)

Lawsuits 

• JEMB Realty has filed a lawsuit that claims that Greenwich Insurance Company should have covered their losses at 1293 Broadway because the pandemic is defined as a pollutant. The insurance policy defined pollutants as “any solid, liquid, gaseous or thermal pollutant, irritant or contaminant.” The coronavirus qualifies, given that it spreads through the air or via surfaces, JEMB claims. The firm is seeking $3 million in remediation. (TRD)

New to the market 

• Brookfield Asset Management is exploring a sale of its life-sciences real estate portfolio, and seeking about $3 billion. The firm is working with advisers to sell roughly 2.3 million square feet of life-sciences real estate it acquired as part of its 2018 purchase of Forest City Realty Trust. (Bloomberg)

Other news

• Nontraded real-estate investment trusts are again bringing in money after a pandemic slowdown… The funds typically take investments of as little as $2,500 and have been paying dividends above 5% without the volatility of the stock market. In the third quarter, the funds raised $1.37 billion. That was $450 million more than they raised in the previous quarter. In the first quarter, a record number investors tried to get their money back and some weren’t able to redeem shares. In the second quarter, redemption requests eased to $515.8 million from $724.1 million in the first quarter. (WSJ)

• With New Yorkers rushing to the suburbs, Fairfield County, Connecticut — the home of tony Greenwich — suddenly has the fastest-rising real estate prices in the U.S. The median home price climbed 33% in September from a year earlier to $499,000, while sales jumped 80%. By both measures, the county was the hottest U.S. housing market, based on an analysis of the largest metropolitan areas in the U.S. (Bloomberg)

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