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DEERFIELD, Ill. — For owners of net leased drugstore properties, one key question resulting from Tuesday’s announcement that Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. (Nasdaq: WBA) has agreed to acquire Rite Aid Corp. (NYSE: RAD) for $17.2 billion, including debt, is what effect will the transaction have on lease terms and cap rates? Jimmy Goodman, a partner with Northbrook, Ill.-based The Boulder Group, which specializes in the net lease sector, believes the deal is good news for owners of single-tenant assets occupied by Rite Aid. “If you own a Rite Aid it’s a positive for you because now you’ve got a better brand in Walgreens, which is second in market share, as opposed to Rite Aid, which is third,” he says. “Initially, I expect transaction volume to slow down simply because people will want to wait and see what will happen to specific stores. Other owners will be worried about store closure impact.” Goodman also doesn’t foresee a high number of Rite Aid locations closing. “Rite Aid’s market share is relatively low and concentrated on certain geographies,” says Goodman. “This will only affect stores that are literally right across the street from one another.” CVS/Pharmacy controls 58 percent market share in the drugstore sector, …

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NEW YORK CITY — Berkadia has secured a $5.1 billion loan for a portfolio of 107 multifamily properties located across nine states that was recently acquired by Lone Star Real Estate Fund. The portfolio consists of more than 36,500 units in Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and four other states. Anthony Cinquini, managing director of Berkadia’s Los Angeles office, worked with the borrower, Lone Star, to originate the seven-year loan through Berkadia’s Freddie Mac Program. Lone Star used the mortgage financing to assist in its acquisition of Home Properties Inc., which included the 36,500 units, on October 7. “This is the largest multifamily transaction Berkadia has executed with Freddie Mac to date, representing an outstanding team effort by everyone involved,” says Cinquini. New York-based Berkadia, a joint venture of Berkshire Hathaway and Leucadia National Corp., provides capital solutions and investment sales advisory and research services for multifamily and commercial properties. Lone Star is a private equity firm that invests globally in distressed assets and established its first fund in 1995. — Scott Reid

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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Multifamily lending nationwide continues to trend upward, as evidenced by the $195.1 billion in mortgages originated in 2014 by more than 2,800 different multifamily lenders for apartment buildings with five or more units, according to a newly released report compiled by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA).  The 2014 dollar volume represents a 13 percent increase from 2013 levels of $172.5 billion, concludes MBA’s Annual Report on Multifamily Lending for 2014. The average loan size also increased 23 percent, from $3.9 million in 2013 to $4.8 million in 2014. The report is based on data from MBA’s surveys of large multifamily lenders in the 2014 Commercial Multifamily Annual Origination Volume Summation survey and recently released Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data that covers multifamily loans made by many smaller lenders, particularly commercial banks. The MBA survey targets dedicated commercial/multifamily originators and covered $400 billion in commercial/multifamily loans in 2014. The HMDA data adds multifamily loans from banks, thrifts and other institutions that meet certain single-family origination thresholds. “The lending came from a range of lenders, with two-thirds making five or fewer multifamily loans during the year, and went to a range of borrowers, with more than one-quarter of the loans …

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GREENWICH, CONN. — Starwood Capital Group has agreed to purchase 72 multifamily properties totaling 23,262 units from Equity Residential (NYSE: EQR) for $5.3 billion. The purchase price equates to approximately $230,634 per unit, with a capitalization rate of 5.5 percent. The deal represents the largest non-hotel acquisition in the history of Greenwich, Conn.-based Starwood Capital Group, which has extensive experience investing in the multifamily sector. Following the final closing of the transaction, expected to occur in the first quarter of 2016, Starwood Capital Group will control more than 88,000 units, making the firm one of the largest apartment owners in the United States. The portfolio contains properties in South Florida, Denver, Washington, D.C., Seattle and the Inland Empire area of Southern California (see below for a detailed breakdown of the properties sold). Including this transaction, Starwood has acquired or is under contract to acquire approximately 67,800 multifamily units over the past 12 months. “Our intimate market knowledge and access to capital allowed us to execute on this transaction quickly and efficiently,” says Christopher Graham, senior managing director and head of real estate acquisitions for the Americas at Starwood Capital Group. “Our existing multifamily portfolio provides us with tremendous insights into market …

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GREENWICH, CONN. — Monument Partners LLC, an entity owned by affiliates of Starwood Capital Group and Milestone Apartments Real Estate Investment Trust (TSX: MST.UN), has entered into an agreement to acquire Landmark Apartment Trust Inc. in an all-cash transaction valued at $1.9 billion, including the assumption of existing debt. Under the terms of the deal, Starwood Global Opportunity Fund X, through a controlled affiliate, will acquire Landmark Apartment Trust’s ownership interest in 19,615 units in 63 apartment communities. The portfolio is located in eight Sunbelt states, with major concentrations in Dallas, Atlanta, Orlando, Tampa, Charlotte and Nashville. Milestone — which will acquire 4,172 units in 15 assets as part of the transaction — will serve as property manager for Starwood’s portion of the portfolio. “This acquisition highlights our confidence in multifamily housing as an asset class that represents an attractive risk-reward proposition for our investors,” says Christopher Graham, senior managing director and head of real estate acquisitions for the Americas at Starwood Capital Group based in Greenwich. “Across the United States, demographic, economic and financial factors are driving apartment vacancy rates lower and rental rates higher — and we believe that these trends will continue into the foreseeable future,” adds …

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ORLANDO, FLA. — The board of directors for Darden Restaurants Inc. (NYSE: DRI) has approved the tax-free spin-off of select real estate and restaurant assets into Four Corners Property Trust Inc. Darden hopes to raise as much as $1 billion with the spin-off that will put 424 restaurants into the REIT. Darden Restaurants owns and operates more than 1,500 restaurants that generate $6.8 billion in annual sales. Employing 150,000 people and based in Orlando, Darden’s restaurant brands include Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse, Bahama Breeze, Seasons 52, The Capital Grille, Eddie V’s and Yard House. Darden intends to use proceeds from the sale-leaseback of select real estate properties, debt financing from FCPT and Darden’s balance sheet cash to retire approximately $1 billion in debt. Four Corners will become an independent, publicly traded REIT that will trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the stock symbol FCPT, which the Securities and Exchange Commission recently approved. “Today’s announcement is one of the final steps in the spin-off transaction, which will allow us to optimize the value of a significant portion of our captive real estate while also positioning two companies for success,” says Gene Lee, CEO of Darden Restaurants. “Among other advantages, …

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Tax assessors across the country are drawing battle lines to pit new valuation theories against accepted appraisal methodologies. This fierce ideological assault threatens the sustainability of retail businesses weighed down by ever-increasing property taxes. Retail landlords who desire to have their real estate valued on a fee simple basis routinely face assessors who claim that these owners want their property valued as a “dark store.” This prickly issue originally focused on how to value big-box stores for property tax purposes, but its scope has widened to affect a range of retail property types. Controversy’s roots run deep Woolworth’s opened the first big-box store in 1962, the same year that McDonald’s introduced the golden arches and ushered in the concept of branding stores with identical interiors and exteriors. Over the following decades, Walmart, Kmart, Target and other retailers married the big-box format with McDonald’s-style branding. Replicating the same store in many locations increased consumers’ brand recognition and reduced the owner’s cost to develop, stock, open and operate new locations. Much of today’s controversy over assessments stems from alternative financing methods that caught on with these major retailers. The two most common strategies are build-to-suit and sale-leaseback arrangements, both of which generate …

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NEW YORK CITY — SL Green Realty Corp. (NYSE: SLG), New York City’s largest commercial property owner and an S&P 500 company, has sold its interest in two Manhattan properties with an aggregate value of $649 million. In the first transaction, SL Green has agreed to sell its interest in the land underneath 885 Third Ave., also known as the Lipstick Building, for a gross sales price of $453 million. A partnership between Ceruzzi Properties and Shanhai Municipal Investment USA is the buyer, according to the Commercial Observer. In the second deal is an agreement to sell the recently completed Pace University dormitory tower, located at 33 Beekman St., for a gross sales price of $196 million. SL Green owns the property in a joint venture. SL Green acquired the leased fee interest in 885 Third Ave. in a joint venture in 2007 at a gross asset valuation of $317 million and fully consolidated its position in 2010 at a valuation of $352 million. As part of the transaction, SL Green will retain a preferred equity position. The sale, executed at a capitalization rate of 3.8 percent, will generate net proceeds to SL Green of approximately $45 million. The sale …

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NEW YORK CITY — The Blackstone Group (NYSE: BX), in partnership with Ivanhoé Cambridge, has acquired Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village, a 110-building multifamily complex in Manhattan that includes more than 11,000 units. Although the purchase price wasn’t disclosed in a press release issued today by the mayor’s office confirming the deal, the Wall Street Journal lists the sales price at approximately $5.3 billion. Ivanhoé Cambridge is the real estate arm of Canadian pension fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.Since 2010, a group of creditors led by CWCapital Asset Management, owned by Fortress Investment Group LLC, has controlled the complex, the Journal adds. As part of the deal, Blackstone signed a regulatory agreement with the City of New York to preserve 5,000 units of the complex as affordable housing for the next 20 years. Some 4,500 of the two-bedroom units will be reserved for families of three earning up to $128,210 per year. They will pay rent of $3,205 per month. An additional 500 two-bedroom units will be reserved for families of three earning up to $62,150 per year, who would pay approximately $1,553 per month. The remaining half of the units of the complex would rent at market rate, or more than $4,200 per month for a two-bedroom apartment. “It …

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In the first half of 2015, the seniors housing market saw steadily rising demand, acquisition volume and return on investment, according to CBRE’s 2015 Mid-Year Senior Housing Market Insight Review. Seniors housing demand is driven by the aging of Baby Boomers, a healthy housing market, an attractive spread between borrowing rates and capitalization rates, and relatively limited new development in aggregate since 2000. Through the second quarter of 2015, the seven-year total return on investment for seniors housing was 10.5 percent. The one-year return was 15.2 percent. These figures are based on property index performance data provided by the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF). These returns are considerably higher than that of other major real estate property types, according to NCREIF.   During the past four quarters, occupancy has steadily risen, with the second quarter of 2015 ending at 90 percent occupancy. Acquisition volumes set new records in 2014, with last year seeing 294 transactions totaling approximately $25.5 billion in the seniors housing sector. The total transaction volume by dollar amount in 2014 represented a 130 percent increase over 2013, and almost a 13 percent increase over the transaction volume in 2006, which held the previous record at approximately $22.6 billion across 146 …

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