Value Of PIMCO's 3M SF Office Portfolio Cut 30%
The seven-property office portfolio that PIMCO subsidiary Columbia Property Trust defaulted on earlier this year has seen its value drop by 30%.
The properties, which span more than 3M SF of office space, were previously appraised at $2.34B, but a new appraisal initiated by special servicer Wells Fargo pegged the value of the buildings at $1.6B, The Real Deal reported, citing Trepp data.
The new appraisal is below the $1.7B outstanding on the loan balance secured by the buildings, which sit in New York City, San Francisco, Boston and Jersey City.
PIMCO, which acquired Columbia Property Trust in 2021, defaulted on the loan in February. The properties were saddled with floating-rate debt, and the loan was provided by a group of lenders including Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank AG.
Wells Fargo said in its commentary that rent collections “remain an issue” at several of the buildings, TRD reported. In February, Columbia Property Trust sued Twitter for nonpayment of rent at 650 California St. in San Francisco.
Along with the 471K SF property at 650 California St., the Columbia Property Trust portfolio includes 201 California St., a 259K SF 17-story office tower at the corner of California and Front streets in San Francisco.
There is also 229 West 43rd St., a 934K SF office tower in the Theater District of Manhattan that was once home to The New York Times, as well as 245-249 West 17th St. in Manhattan, two interconnected buildings that also have Twitter as a tenant.
It also includes 315 Park Avenue South and 116 Huntington Ave., a 272K SF office building in Boston, as well as 95 Columbus, a 19-story, 629K SF office tower in Jersey City.
Office properties are facing a major reset in values, and rising rates have hit office owners hard. In New York, brokerage JLL identified 73 office properties in the city, spanning 15.1M SF, that would be classified as underwater.
Researchers at Columbia and New York universities estimated that office buildings nationwide already lost $500B in value between 2019 and 2022. Overall, office buildings could lose 44% of their value, they predicted in a report last month.
