HFF Finds Buyer for Florida Office Tower

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

HFF does it again. A decade after orchestrating the sale of the Bank of America Tower in Boca Raton, Fla., the commercial real estate and capital markets services provider has facilitated the disposition of the 109,500-square-foot office building for the second time. Acting on behalf of Clarion Partners, HFF reeled in Dividend Capital Diversified Property Fund Inc. as a buyer.

Clarion Partners had acquired the BofA Tower for $34.2 million in 2005. This time around, the unencumbered Class A asset traded for approximately $35.8 million.

Sited at 150 E. Palmetto Park Rd on roughly 1.7 acres in the heart of downtown Boca Raton, the eight-story BofA Tower welcomed its first tenants in 1970. The property, also featuring ground-level retail space and an adjacent parking facility, underwent substantial renovation in 1997 and 2010. Today it is 87 percent occupied to a list of credit tenants that includes 20-year tenant Bank of America, which occupies nearly 30 percent of the office space, Charles Schwab & Co. and others.

Given the current climate in the Boca Raton office market, the occupancy level at the BofA Tower could be headed for a boost. In the third quarter, the market’s vacancy rate had dropped 320 basis points year-over-year, according to a report by commercial real estate services provider JLL.