Net Lease Office Properties Sells Asset for $72M

August 9, 2024

Investment News Office Phoenix More West

This deal is the latest in the REIT's sell-off strategy.

The office property at 9501 E. Shea Blvd. came online in 1977. *Image courtesy of CommercialEdge*

In the latest of a string of dispositions, Net Lease Office Properties has sold a 354,000-square-foot office building in metro Phoenix to an unspecified buyer for $71.5 million.

Proceeds will repay about $55 million on the asset’s senior secured mortgage, which is held by J.P. Morgan, and about $8 million on its mezzanine loan.

This asset previously changed hands for $39.8 million in 2000, according to CommercialEdge information. Completed in 1977, the two-story building at 9501 E. Shea Blvd. is leased to CVS Health Corp., which is one of NLOP’s top 10 tenants in terms of space. The property occupies about 38 acres in Scottsdale, Ariz., some 21 miles northeast of downtown Phoenix.

The company, a publicly traded REIT, holds 46 properties totaling about 6.6 million square feet after the sale. Most of those—43 assets, primarily leased to corporate tenants on a single-tenant net lease basis—are in the U.S., while three are in Europe. NLOP is in the process of selling off its assets as part of the long-term plan.

W.P. Carey spun off the REIT last year as an important part of its strategy to exit the ailing office market. At the time, NLOP took ownership of 59 net leased office properties with an annualized base rent of about $141 million. Since then, NLOP has been selling these assets, with its current ABR totaling about $102 million.

During the six months ended June 30, 2024, NLOP sold six properties, realizing total proceeds, net of selling costs, of $195.2 million. Due to the depressed office market, the sales marked a net loss of $40 million.

Net lease market sluggish

Net lease deals, like most commercial real estate transactions, have slowed in the current higher interest rate climate. The relative dearth of transactions when compared to recent years means that the supply of net lease assets is rising—up 8 percent from the previous quarter—with no clear path toward reducing the inventory, according to The Boulder Group’s second quarter 2024 net lease report.

Many investors believe the current market strongly favors buyers over sellers in terms of asset pricing, according to the report, a fact that has been pushing overall net lease cap rates upward from 6.64 percent in Q1 to 6.7 percent in Q2 2024.

Net lease office properties in particular are seeing the number of properties, as well as cap rates, climb considerably. In the first quarter of this year, 590 office-related net lease assets were on the market, a figure that grew more than 11 percent by the second quarter. Office sector cap rates grew as well, up from 7.6 percent to 7.67 percent quarter-over-quarter.