Tuesday, October 4, 2016

Liberty Property Trust Completes Sale of 108 Properties for $969 Million

by Natalie Kostelni, Staff writer the Philadelphia Business Journal
Liberty Property Trust has completed a nearly $1 billion sale of 108 properties in five markets to Workspace Property Trust.

The deal had been in the works since the beginning of the year and was expected to close late in the third quarter.

All of the properties Liberty is selling are in the suburbs of Philadelphia, as well as in Arizona, Florida and Minnesota. The assets total 7.6 million square feet. The transaction makes inroads on the company's strategy to exit suburban office markets and concentrate on industrial warehouse and distribution centers as well as urban centers such as Philadelphia and Washington D.C.

With this transaction final, Liberty has sold $1.2 billion in real estate so far this year.

Thirty of the properties, which total a tad more than 2 million square feet, are in Pennsylvania. The bulk of that space, or 1.2 million square feet, consists of office space.

Workspace Property, based in Horsham, Pennsylvania, bought the properties in a partnership with Safanad Ltd., a global investment firm. The portfolio included 26.7 acres of land and the buildings involved were 88.1 percent leased at the time of the sale.

Liberty will continue to own buildings it leases to Vanguard Group in the Great Valley Corporate Center as well as several redevelopment sites in the office park. The real estate investment trust will also hold onto its King of Prussia properties but will jettison buildings in the Chesterbrook Corporate Center.

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