A prominent downtown Boston office tower sold at a foreclosure auction to its previous owner at a fraction of its former price.
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Rockpoint Group won the auction for 100 Summer St., an office tower it has owned for seven years that its lender foreclosed on last month. The auction took place at the front entrance of the building, with about 35 people assembled outside on a cold fall afternoon.
Sullivan & Sullivan Auctioneers auctioneer Marianne Sullivan set the opening bid at $260M. Rockpoint was the sole bidder.
Rockpoint didn't respond to requests for comment at the auction.
Wells Fargo Bank foreclosed on the 32-story office tower in September. The property was initially planned to be auctioned on Oct. 20, but it was rescheduled.
The property is roughly 72% leased, according to the auctioneer, with more than 330K SF of space available. The tower is home to tenants including SimpliSafe, Geode Capital Management, Bullhorn and Ironwood Pharmaceuticals. The property was developed in 1980 by Cabot, Cabot & Forbes.
Rockpoint purchased the property for $806M shortly before the pandemic in 2019 from Blackstone. Wells Fargo provided Rockpoint with a $470M loan at the time.
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Rockpoint had roughly $13B in net assets under management as of June 30 and has roughly $29B in capital commitments. Other properties in its portfolio include the Altitude Apartments in Malden, 500 Ocean in Revere and RiverTech Center in Billerica.
It’s unclear what the landlord's plans are for the property going forward, but it could follow a similar path as other owners of older office buildings in the area.
One Lincoln was acquired by the property's lender, DivcoWest, during an auction last year, paying $400M for the 1.1M SF office tower. The landlord then went on to invest $100M in renovations at the property, later securing several tenants, including artificial intelligence tech company Lovable and pharmaceutical company Collegium Pharmaceuticals.
The Summer Street building is the latest significant Boston property to go to auction, with several others meeting the same fate over the past year.
In March, an auction was held for a 6-acre development site in South Boston, for which New York-based firm JT Magen & Co. submitted the winning $75M bid. The site is now proposed for a massive redevelopment.
A month later, lender PCCP won the bid for the 1M SF Brickstone Square office complex in Andover. Starwood Property Trust subsidiary LNR submitted the winning $95M bid in March for 31 St. James, which is now set to be converted into residential units.
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