Investment Sales Continue to Flourish in DC

WASHINGTON, DC-Despite some softening in vacancy rates here, the District’s office market is still among the strongest performing in the country, according to a new report by Delta Associates, the research affiliate of Transwestern, which looked at metrics for the half year mark.

“We are still seeing a lot of capital flowing into the area,” Elizabeth Norton, director of Research, Mid-Atlantic Region, for Delta Associates, tells GlobeSt.com. Indeed investment sales performance for the first half of the year—which registered some $8.9 billion—is on track to exceed 2006′s record $13.8 billion, she adds. “If you ‘annualize’ 2007′s first half, that number would be $14.2 billion.”

Investment sales in DC were bolstered by two portfolio sales and one company sale: Normandy Real Estate Partners acquisition of the US Army/Air Force Mutual Aid Association’s real estate portfolio, called Starco Properties, for $157 million; JPMorgan Asset Management’s Special Situation Property Fund’s $502 million acquisition of Columbia Equity Trust Inc.; and Blackstone’s acquisition of Equity Office Property Trust.