BXP Offloads $1B Of Land, Multifamily, Life Sciences And Office
Just four months after telling investors it planned to offload $1.9B of noncore assets, BXP is more than halfway to its goal.
Since September, the Boston-based REIT has offloaded more than $1B across 16 assets: seven suburban land parcels, two multifamily properties and seven noncore office and life sciences properties, it announced Wednesday.
BXP had unveiled the strategy at an investor day conference in September, saying it planned to sell nearly 30 assets between 2025 and 2027 to fund its development pipeline. BXP CEO Owen Thomas said in Wednesday's news release that the sales are a “key strategic priority.”
“Our asset sales program is designed to both raise capital to fund our industry-leading premier workplace developments, where we can achieve more attractive returns, as well as increase our premier workplace portfolio concentration in central business districts in our core gateway markets,” he added.
Roughly $845M of the sales were completed in the fourth quarter, with two additional sales closing this month, BXP said.
The REIT didn't disclose the locations of the properties it sold. But it said the seven suburban land sales were in the Boston, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., regions and brought in a total of $220M.
The two residential properties in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Reston, Virginia, sold for $405M.
The Cambridge one appears to be the 280-unit Proto, which was acquired by Pembroke for $170M in December. The other is likely the 508-unit Signature apartment towers at Reston Town Center, which BXP had reportedly found a buyer for in the fall.
The seven noncore office and life sciences properties in Needham, Massachusetts, and South San Francisco brought in a total of $400M.
In December, BXP offloaded a 409K SF, three-building office campus in Needham for $132M. It had owned the property since 1999.
In the September announcement of the disposition plan, Thomas said the REIT was “more in need of capital” given its planned 930K SF office tower development at 343 Madison Ave. in New York City.
The REIT also has two 320K SF trophy office developments on the boards for downtown D.C. It has started demolishing one site in the heart of the central business district for law firms McDermott Will & Schulte and Cooley, and it is planning another development on the west side of the city for Sidley Austin, Bisnow first reported last month.
BXP owns 54.6M SF across 187 properties and has a 3.5M SF development pipeline, including a trio of multifamily projects.
