Real estate companies spent $1.44 billion on Austin office buildings in the first half of 2007, up a whopping 434 percent from the first half of 2006, a new report shows.
Fifteen office buildings in the Austin metropolitan area changed hands from January through June, according to the report in the latest issue of national industry publication Real Estate Alert. That’s a big jump from the three properties that sold during the same period in 2006.
A large chunk of the pie–10 buildings–were part of the $1.15 billion Thomas Properties Group Inc. purchase of Equity Office‘s former portfolio. But even without the record-setting Thomas Properties [NASDAQ: TPGI] deal, the transactions in the latest six-month period total $340.2 million. That’s still a 26 percent increase from the $269.7 million recorded a year earlier.
Austin ranked 13th among major U.S. office markets in terms of transaction values, ahead of cities like Denver, Chicago and Dallas, according to the Real Estate Alert report. The top five markets on the list are New York, Northern Virginia, Seattle, San Francisco and Washington D.C., in that order.
