TAMPA, FL-W.P Carey’s Corporate Property Associates, otherwise known as CPA 17-Global, a non-traded public REIT affiliate, purchased two office towers in Tampa from Brookfield Real Estate Opportunity Group, an affiliate of Brookfield Asset Management. The sale of the two buildings, which are fully-occupied by JP Morgan Chase, closed at the end of last week for an undisclosed sum.

The sale follows W.P. Carey’s February purchase from Brookfield of a 386,000-square-foot operations center in Dallas leased to JP Morgan Chase. While the New York City-based Carey specializes in long-term, sale-leaseback and build-to-suit financing for companies throughout the world, the Tampa purchase was a more straight-forward acquisition, even though the leases at the building helped determine the value of the property.

The two Tampa office buildings are located in the Fountain Square Office Park in the Westshore submarket, an upscale area near Tampa International Airport. One is the 135,000-square foot Fountain I, which was built in 1985, and the second is the 176,000-square-foot Fountain III, which was built in 2000.

The long-term leases with JP Morgan in the Fountain Square Office Park range from 15 to 20 years. The first lease is for about 15 years and the second building lease is for 20 years. The two started at different times, but both have about 15 years left on them, says Lawrence.

In the last year or so, Tampa and other secondary markets have been attracting attention from institutional buyers, says Lawrence. “There was a fair amount of interest in these properties,” he says, which drove up the price. “The debt markets have eased up a bit and we are coming out of the crisis, so the appetite for real estate everywhere has started to increase,” he says.

In March 2009, Carey provided $225 million of sale-leaseback financing to the New York Times Co. through the acquisition of approximately 750,000 rentable square feet of its New York City headquarters building. The three-year-old building has a total of 1.5 million square feet.

At W.P. Carey, a public company which manages an investment portfolio approaching $10 billion, says Lawrence, “We look for long term leases and tenants with strong operations that will be able to pay the rent in the future,” he says. In the case of the New York Times, “We felt that it would be there for a long time, but if, for some reason, it didn’t survive, we would still have a Class A Midtown office building.”

“We are looking everywhere for real estate,” says Lawrence. In February of this year the firm purchased, through its CPA 17-Global affiliate, a portfolio of super markets in Spain called Eroski Sociedad Cooperativa for $104 million.

W.P. Carey has a series of these non-traded REITs, says Lawrence, which typically have a life of 10 to 12 years. “CPA 17-Global is in its early stages, so distribution is 10 to 12 years from now,” he says.

The firm likes non-traded REITs, says Lawrence, because investing in long-term, triple net leased properties is less volatile than investing in publicly-traded REITs which trade on the stock market.

“We are well-capitalized, so we are guaranteed that we can close on commercial real estate assets quickly,” says Lawerence. “Although we do use financing, it is only 50% to 60%,” he says. “W.P. Carey is well-positioned compared to a lot of other investors who must have financing in place before they close on a deal, or need more financing than we do,” he says.

W.P. Carey uses leverage for acquisitions, says Lawrence, “because it allows us to create greater diversity within our portfolio.” Plus, in the current market, “W.P. Carey can get positive leverage, because the cap rates on leases are higher than the rates at which we borrow, he says.

Lawrence says that Carey doesn’t have any more investments planned for the CPA 17-Global fund, but it still might make an investment, depending on what opportunities arise, regardless of location.

“For a quality credit tenant like JP Morgan, the pricing in Tampa is probably comparable to what it would be in the Northeast or the West Coast,” he says. “When we recently bought another lease in the Dallas area the price was comparable to what was paid in Tampa,” says Lawrence. “We look at tenant, rather than the region.”