Brandywine Realty Trust CEO: 'We Got To Get Out' Of D.C. Market
Brandywine Realty Trust is looking for the exits on its 4.5M SF D.C.-area office portfolio.
The Philadelphia-based REIT plans to offload its properties, except for some land, in the area over the next few years, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported.
Brandywine CEO Jerry Sweeney said the market, once Brandywine's biggest, has been bitten by the federal workforce's stalled return to office, calling the lack of progress a “killer.”
“Our capital costs combined with net effective rents just made me conclude we got to get out of the market,” Sweeney said at a business lunch, the PBJ reported. “My guess is in the next few years we’ll be out of the market except for some land.”
Brandywine owns 14 total properties in the D.C. area, according to its website, with properties across Fairfax, Bethesda and Rockville. The Washington Business Journal reported in February that Brandywine’s website showed that it owned 19 office properties in the D.C. region at the time, including 14 in Fairfax.
The company announced in January that it took a $115M impairment charge on four suburban D.C. properties because of their declining values. It's unclear which properties were written down.
Brandywine's DMV portfolio includes 1676 International Drive, a 299K SF office building in Tysons currently serving as the temporary headquarters of Mars Inc., and Research Office Center I, II and III in Rockville, which total 433K SF.
It has already begun trimming its local portfolio in recent years. It sold the 151K SF office building 8521 Leesburg Pike in Tysons for $11M in December after recording a $12.3M loss on the asset, according to its 2023 annual report.
In that filing, it stopped listing the D.C. area as one of its core segments, instead recategorizing those holdings as “other.”
“Brandywine has strategically reduced its presence in the D.C. market over the years due to ongoing underperformance and increasing capital costs,” a Brandywine spokesperson said in a statement. “While we have successfully repositioned several assets, our presence in the market is not substantial enough to leverage the benefits of scale. A selective exit enables us to concentrate resources on markets where we can sustain leadership and generate the most value.”
The REIT owned the 32K SF Bullpen development site at 25 M St. SE near Nationals Park before selling it to Skanska in 2022. In 2021, it sold a 184K SF office building in Ballston to Monday Properties for $27.6M.
The company was selected in 2021 to build a $300M mixed-use development with Terrapin Development Co. planned for office, retail and housing next to The Hotel at the University of Maryland. That project was set to break ground at the end of last year.
Brandywine entered the D.C. market in 2006 when it acquired Prentiss Properties and its D.C.-area assets.
UPDATE, OCT. 18, 9:20 A.M. ET: This story has been updated to include a statement from Brandywine's spokesperson.
