Starwood, Trinity, Vanderbilt Sell Big in NC

By Scott Baltic, Contributing Editor

Scot Humphrey, HFF senior director

A joint venture of Starwood Capital Group, Trinity Capital Advisors and Vanderbilt Partners has sold, for $105.5 million, a seven-property, 581,600-square-foot office portfolio in the Perimeter Park in Raleigh-Durham, N.C. HFF marketed the offering on behalf of the seller and procured the buyer, an undisclosed institutional investor.

The seven properties are at 1500, 1600, 1700, 1800, 2000 and 2250 Perimeter Park and 3800 Paramount Parkway, within Raleigh-Durham’s Research Triangle Park/Interstate 40 submarket. The portfolio has easy access to interstates 540 and 40, Research Triangle Park and Raleigh-Durham International Airport as well as residential neighborhoods in Cary, West Raleigh and North Raleigh.

 “Investor interest in the portfolio was extraordinary, as Raleigh-Durham’s expanding economy continues to attract a significant amount of attention from institutional capital, and opportunities of this scale and quality are difficult to find here,” Scot Humphrey, senior director at HFF, said in a prepared statement.

The properties were completed in the 1990s and early 2000s and are currently about 91 percent leased to a STEM-heavy tenant roster that includes QuintilesIMS, AECOM, TrialCard, UNC Physicians Network and Beacon Health Options Inc.

“This transaction demonstrates the strong appeal and growing appetite from institutional investors for well-positioned office investment opportunities in Raleigh-Durham and throughout the overall Carolinas market,” added Ryan Cutter, senior managing director at HFF. “Suburban office has proven to be a more challenging asset class to sell in many markets around the country, yet the Carolinas continue to see significantly more interest and deeper bid pools than its peer markets.”

The HFF investment sales team representing the seller consisted of Scot Humphrey, Ryan Clutter and Chris Lingerfelt.

The Triangle’s Booming Office Market

The Raleigh-Durham office market is undergoing a “construction frenzy,” even as vacancies fall to record lows and Class A rents have risen by about 12 percent year-over-year, according to a second-quarter report from Colliers International.

The Research Triangle Park/I-40 submarket consists of about 5.6 million square feet of inventory with a total vacancy of 6.0 percent. The submarket has an average rent of $23.29 and is looking at only 37,000 square feet currently in the pipeline, according to Colliers.

Image courtesy of HFF