JPG Takes 2 Bethesda Office Buildings for $80M

The JBG Cos. has bought two North Bethesda, Md., properties for $80 million. Together, the class A buildings contain 346,000 square feet. The are located on the Rockville Pike near the Montgomery Mall.Holiday Fenoglio Fowler’s senior managing directors Bob Donhauser and Bill Asbill, and director Cary Abod, helped the firm secure financing, a five-year fixed rate loan, from ING Real Estate. Th market is tight for office space now, with rents in the Montgomery County area hitting a new high of $33.75 per square foot in Class A buildings, according to data from Cushman & Wakefield Inc., which also noted that Montgomery County has had a cooling job market this year and continued weakness in the financial sector, along with the rest of the country. But the unemployment rate in Montgomery County is still at an eight-year low of 2.7 percent. The Bethesda/Chevy Chase is the tightest among all the submarkets in the county with the vacancy rate dropping to 4.3 percent for class A buildings. The JBG Companies, founded in 1960, is an active investor owner and developer in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan real estate market. It currently has more than $10 billion in assets under management.