Blackstone Taking Bids On 815K SF Atlanta Office Tower

Blackstone is continuing to pare its office holdings, the latest in a long strategy of reducing its exposure to the struggling asset class.

Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust is looking to sell Three Ravinia Drive Atlanta, an office building in Atlanta's Central Perimeter it picked up when it acquired Preferred Apartment Communities last year for $5.8B. The building is expected to fetch roughly $175M, Green Street's Real Estate Alert reported. PAC acquired the 814K SF building in 2016 for $210.1M.

Three Ravinia is 92% leased with a weight remaining average lease term of over eight years and has a roughly $113M loan that matures in 2042 that can be assumed by the buyer, Real Estate Alert reported. JLL is handling the marketing of the Dunwoody property, which would be one of the largest trades of the year in Atlanta.

The building has seen millions in recent upgrades and houses the U.S. headquarters of InterContinental Hotels Group and German shipping company Hapag-Lloyd. But its new owner has been looking to shed its office holdings even in a down market, as shown by the asking price more than $30M below its previous sale.

Blackstone has reduced U.S. office space to 2% of its portfolio, down from over 60% in 2007.

The entity that owns Three Ravinia, BREIT, has been faced with investors seeking to pull their investments. The nontraded REIT limited investor redemptions for the seventh straight month in May, fulfilling $1.3B of the $4.4B in withdrawals requested, The DI Wire reported.

BREIT has funded $7.5B in share repurchases since November, but it has also taken in new investments, including $4.5B from the University of California's investment fund.