Posted on 05/14/2024 9:25:08 AM PDT by Miami Rebel
The tallest building in Fort Worth has a commanding position in the city’s skyline, but the 1M SF building only commanded a price of about $12 per square foot at a foreclosure auction.
The price per square foot amounted to less than 10% of the previous sale price for Burnett Plaza, which at 40 stories towers over the other buildings in Fort Worth.
The winning bidder was one of Burnett Plaza’s lenders: Pinnacle Bank Texas bought back the building at this month’s auction with a bid of $12.3M, according to a report in the Dallas Business Journal.
The previous owner, an affiliate of NYC-based Opal Holdings, defaulted on a $13M loan from Pinnacle and set off a foreclosure of Burnett Plaza, which is located at 801 Cherry Street, the report said. Opal bought for tower for $138M in 2021.
The Tarrant Appraisal District has assessed Burnett Plaza’s taxable value at about $104M.
Pinnacle took a second property back from Opal in an auction this month when the bank bought the Centerpoint office complex, a four-building campus encompassing 450K SF at 600 Six Flags Drive in Arlington, the report said.
The vacancy rate in the Dallas-Fort Worth office market hit 25.8% in the first quarter as net absorption again was negative at minus 620K SF, according to a market report from CBRE.
There is now more than 59M SF of vacant office space spread across DFW, the report said.
“Unlike prior quarters, Class A properties fueled negative net absorption in Q1 2024,” CBRE said.
The office-using industry sectors in DFW decelerated significantly in the first quarter as three sizeable deliveries pushed construction activity below 5M SF. Leasing activity for deals 10K SF and larger dropped by 33% in the first quarter compared to Q4 2023, the report said.
River Edge and Thirteen Thirty Three, office projects in the Stemmons Freeway submarket, delivered a total of more than 270K SF in combined Class A office space in the first quarter of which only 4% of the space was preleased at the time of completion.
On the brighter side, CBRE reported that large tenant requirements continue to grow compared to the previous quarter and the previous year. This metric tracks occupiers who are actively in the market for new space, lease renewals and expansions.
Great unintentional point.
With weed no longer illegal at the federal level,
they can use banks now instead of buying real estate.
If they take salary, they pay tax. If they buy property and then take loans against it, no taxes. Add in money laundering from overseas accounts (many held by Americans) and the market is no longer connected to occupancy.
One would be shocked at how many owners of high-end properties have never visited those properties.
a member of a toilet paper dynasty bought property all around an up and coming city and then ran them empty for the tax write off he needed thus turning a former economically vibrant area into a ghost town
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