Patriot Equities is closing out the year with a major
portfolio buy, laying out an estimated $160 million to acquire a 15-building
office portfolio totaling 1.2 million square feet.
The Wayne, Pa., real estate firm bought the buildings in
Colorado Spring, Colo., from Corporate Office Properties Trust. It had been
working on the transaction since the summer. The buildings were more than 90
percent leased at the time of the sale. Cushman & Wakefield represented
COPT in the transaction.
Patriot has been relatively quiet over the last few years.
It spent some time focused on recapitalizing and refinancing its portfolio.
Everything it owns is on a long-term fixed rate term.
“We really have a good, stable portfolio,” said Geoffrey
Gardner, principal and chief investment officer at Patriot.
The company bought earlier this year a small office building
at 353 W. Lancaster Ave. in Wayne that sits across from Minella’s Diner. It
sold a 1.5-million-square-foot portfolio in Charlotte, N.C., that it bought in
2008 and fully leased up. With the COPT acquisition, Patriot controls about 5.5
million square feet of office and industrial space totaling roughly $500
million in investment.
Looking ahead, the company is still going to keep a mix of
office and industrial properties but is looking to make more office buys like
the one it arranged with COPT.
“We like office,” Gardner said. “We see the value in
suburban office. We think it’s a little bit of an overlooked property type. It
fell further in value in the downturn and has been slower to recover but with
the strengthening of the economy, you will see that continue to improve.
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