Durham saw one of the largest commercial real estate sales in the Southeast this summer
Major luxury residential and upscale office developments in the Triangle were sold this summer with multimillion-dollar price tags.
Boston-based tech and innovation investment firm Longfellow Real Estate Partners closed last week on one of the largest real estate transactions in the Triangle and likely the largest in the third quarter of 2020.
The firm paid $138 million for Durham.ID, a pair of newly built office mid-rises of over 330,000 square feet at the intersection of Hunt and Morris streets in downtown Durham. Its tenants include WeWork, Salesforce and Longfellow Real Estate Partners themselves.
In a press release, Bain Capital said the sale was the largest transaction in the Southeast since the start of the pandemic.
Longfellow purchased full ownership of the building, which was previously jointly owned by them and Bain Capital, a national investment firm.
“The development has design features reflective of Durham’s historic roots in textiles and manufacturing combined with the city’s new-age reputation for innovation in the technology and medical sectors,” Bain Capital said in the press release.
Durham.ID is the first phase of the Durham Innovation District, an upcoming 1.8-million-square-foot development consisting of offices, lab, retail and residential properties.
Longfellow spent more than $64 million on an aging office complex near Research Triangle Park in February, The News & Observer reported.
These acquisitions come after office real estate transactions dropped considerably last quarter, reported real estate firm Avison Young.
Office real estate sales dropped to $52 million, below $100 million in the second quarter for the first time since 2014 in the Raleigh-Durham market.
Across the Triangle, COVID-19 has taken a toll on quarterly transactions of all types of real estate. Sales dropped from over $1.6 billion in the first quarter to just $355 million in the second, according to Avison Young.
Epic Games vice president and cofounder Mark Rein and his wife, Tara Dow-Rein, spent $13.7 million on southern Wake County real estate in Holly Springs, the Triangle Business Journal reported.
They bought Town Hall Commons last week, which has 45,000 square feet of office, retail and restaurant space.
Major multifamily investments this quarter
This quarter the Triangle saw large luxury apartment development sales, following a good performance of multifamily sales of over $100 million last quarter.
The recently constructed Cortland Bull City apartment complex at 600 Willard Street in the American Tobacco Campus was purchased for $87 million by Georgia-based real estate investment firm Cortland last month.
Formerly called Brookstone Durham, the complex was built by Alliance Residential Companies, the nation’s largest apartment builder, which started redeveloping an old hotel on that site in 2017.
That company is planning to redevelop the Capital Plaza Hotel on Capital Boulevard in Raleigh, which has sat abandoned for almost two decades.
In downtown Raleigh, the 244-unit luxury Lincoln apartments at 408 Hargett Street near the historic Moore Square district sold for $48.75 million this week. Illinois-based Banner Real Estate Group sold it to an LLC registered in Delaware.
This story was originally published August 7, 2020 at 7:00 AM.
