Foreign Property News | Posted by Si Thu Aung
The San Francisco real estate investor that made the biggest Chicago office purchase of the past two years is picking up another high-profile property nearby.
Spear Street Capital has agreed to pay nearly $225 million, or $346 per square foot, for the 31-story tower at 225 W. Wacker Drive, sources familiar with the deal said.
Mirae, which put the building up for sale last fall, was expecting to fetch as much as $245 million for the 651,000-square-foot tower at the corner of Wacker Drive and Franklin Street.
But downtown office building sales have been harder to come by over the past year.
Some investors have been spooked by uncertainty in Cook County's new approach to valuing commercial properties and how that will impact property taxes, though recent data from the county's Board of Review shows those fears may be overblown.
It's unclear whether that cloudy tax picture factored into pricing for the 31-year-old Wacker Drive building. A Mirae spokeswoman declined to comment and executives at Spear Street couldn't be reached.
A Mirae venture financed its 2013 purchase with a $115 million loan and refinanced the property in 2018 with a $133 million loan, according to Cook County property records.
Spear Street is buying a building that is 96 percent leased, with tenants including the global headquarters of real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield and money manager PPM America.
Ref: Property Report
