£1.4B Office Disposal Marks A Tale Of Two Sales For Brookfield
Canadian real estate giant Brookfield is undertaking two big disposals on either side of the Atlantic — and the conditions for the two could hardly be more different.
First, from a Brookfield perspective, the good news. Brookfield Property Partners has appointed Eastdil Secured and BH2 to find a buyer for its 950K SF 100 Bishopsgate skyscraper in the City of London, React News reported. The price: £1.4B, which would mark a huge profit for the company on a skyscraper it developed speculatively, beginning in 2014.
The building cost £800M to construct, and Brookfield crystallized a £350M profit with a refinancing in 2019. A sale at £1.4B would see it take another £250M in profit. The building is 90% let.
Contrast that with news that Brookfield Property REIT, a listed subsidiary of Brookfield, is to begin selling off some of the U.S. mall assets that it accumulated in when it bought GGP and Forest City Realty in 2018 for more than $20B combined.
The sale accompanies the culling of one in five of the retail staff the REIT employs, the Financial Times reports. It comes at a cyclical low point for retail values. The REIT had to renegotiate $6.4B of debt secured against its assets and provide $250M in fresh capital earlier this year.
