Institutional Owners Show Renewed Confidence in the Investment Market
A fund managed by DRA Advisors has brought the Pinnacle Corporate Park to market on the heels of Starwood Capital Group’s sale of Crossroads Business Park.
Institutional owners are re-entering the investment market, showing a renewed confidence to secure strong pricing. A fund managed by DRA Advisors is bringing the Pinnacle Corporate Park to market. The two-building, class-A office portfolio totals 259,458 square feet and is located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
There has been a recent trend of institutional owners bringing assets to market following a stark pause through 2020. Starwood Capital Group sold the Crossroads Business Park in December for more than $78 million. The deal included three properties and more than 300,000 square feet. Avison Young, which is exclusively representing DRA Advisors in its office portfolio sale, expects the deal to be similar in nature. “We are seeing an uptick in demand for investors looking to deploy capital in well-located South Florida office assets,” said David Duckworth of Avison Young in a statement. Duckworth is representing DRA along with John K. Crotty, Michael T. Fay, Greg Martin, and George Vail.
The sales activity is happening in other markets as well. This week, KBS REIT III announced the sale of Anchor Centre, a 333,014 square-foot class-A office property in Phoenix. KBS had acquired the property in 2014 and completed a significant value-add improvement plan, driving leasing above 90% at the property.
Pinnacle Corporate Park is well positioned to attract market demand. It is located in the desirable Cypress Creek submarket and has a history of strong occupancy and rental rate growth. The site also boasts the potential for residential development in the coming years.
Over the last year, suburban locations and secondary markets like Fort Lauderdale have dominated office investment activity. An earlier report from Colliers International found that there were $10.3 billion of investments in the suburbs compared with $3.3 billion in CBD locations. Research from Yardi Matrix found similar velocity in the suburbs as well. Still, total year-over-year investment sales volume is down more than 50%.
Investors aren’t only bringing properties to market; they are actively buying as well. At the end of 2020, Apex Capital Investments Corp. purchased Grand2 in Phoenix’s largest investment of the year and the fifth largest office deal in the US. The new construction 9-story, 358,000-square-foot office building is fully leased to San Francisco-based DoorDash.