An investment group led by ABS Partners Real Estate and Acre Valley Real Estate Capital paid $150 million to acquire the Datran Center, a two-tower office complex in Miami’s Kendall neighborhood.
Together, the buildings have just less than 500,000 square feet of office space and are about 85 percent occupied, according to the buyers. ABS and Acre Valley bought the Dadeland buildings along with the Ardent Companies and IP Capital Partners. They financed the sale with a loan from German lender Aareal Bank.
The deal marks another sign of the strength of Miami’s office market as commercial investors shift away from cities like New York and San Francisco, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the sale. Asking rents in Miami-Dade are also up as new office supply lags behind condo and mixed-use development.
The cap rate for the Datran Center is about 6 percent, higher than for office buildings in New York, experts told the newspaper. Sales volume of office properties is up in Miami, according to CBRE. Sales increased by 9 percent to $1.8 billion in 2015 from 2014.
Datran Center last sold in 2008, according to a press release. Before that, property records show the buildings, at 9100 and 9130 South Dadeland Boulevard, sold for $70.55 million in 1998. They connect to MDM Group‘s Miami Marriott Dadeland, as well as the Metrorail, and are near Dadeland Mall. Datran Center also includes a 1,452-space underground parking garage.
Gregg Schenker, president and co-managing partner of ABS, said the office complex is away from Miami’s “highly congested business district” and above the floodplain. The new owners have hired Kobi Karp Architecture to upgrade the 30,000-square-foot lobby, which connects to the Marriott.
Schenker and Jason Fein, and Andrew Hananel and Joshua Hostetter of Acre Valley represented the buyers in the transaction, while HFF represented the seller, USAA Real Estate Co. and a Canadian-based REIT.
USAA, which bought a South Miami office building in December for $40 million, has about $15 billion in assets under management, according to its website.
In Manhattan, ABS owns buildings that include 200 Park Avenue South and 915 Broadway. [WSJ] – Katherine Kallergis