This Florida Investor Has Money To Spend On ATL Office

Fresh from buying a significant Alpharetta office park, Florida-based Accesso Partners is on the hunt for more office in Atlanta. We spoke with director Paul Gaines to get the scoop on its plans. 

The firm is closing out its fifth fund, which acquired $800M in properties, and is set to embark on a capital raise for its sixth multimillion-dollar fund.

Last week, Accesso marked its third buy in Atlanta with North Point Center East, a four-building, 542k SF office campus next to North Point Mall that's home to Merrill Lynch Wealth Management and MedAssets for $92.25M, or more than $170/SF, from Cousins Properties. Paul says North Point Center East is the kind of stabilized and value-add office assets the fund looks to buy for its cash-flow-hungry investors.

North Point Center East was sold by CBRE's Will Yowell, Jay O'Meara and Justin Parsonnet (all here). Acesso also purchased Platinum Tower in 2013 and an IBM facility in Cobb County. In Atlanta, Paul notes this recovery has been marked by a sheer lack of new office development, which has been great for rent appreciation—and hard on finding solid deals without a lot of competing bids.

But he cautions that the lack of new development has less to do with Atlanta being built-out, and more that the development focus in Atlanta has been on multifamily this cycle.

Paul says he expects some noteworthy towers to hit the local Atlanta market. And Atlanta is a focus for Accesso in 2016, along with Austin, Chicago, Dallas, Denver and Philadelphia.

The firm eyes stabilized properties with at least 80% occupancy in markets where it's more difficult to get competing properties off the ground. Even in Alpharetta, where there are developers angling for new projects, rents still haven't hit the point where new construction makes sense, he says.