Japanese company buys office building in Seattle for $268m

Takenaka Corp. has purchased Tilt49, a 290,573-square-foot office building in Seattle, for $268.5 million, according to media outlets.

The seller was a joint venture between Principal Real Estate Investors and Touchstone.

Tilt49 is triple-net leased to Amazon through 2033. Amazon will begin to occupy Tilt49 early next year. The newly constructed project includes 1,646 square feet of retail leased to Mighty-O Donuts. Amazon occupies 8.1 million square feet in Seattle and will have more than 12 million square feet by 2022, according to Cushman & Wakefield. During the third quarter, the company announced its plan to invest $5 billion to create “HQ2”, a second North American headquarters that will be a full equal to its Seattle campus.

Takenaka Corp. is an architecture, engineering and construction firms in Japan. Headquartered in Osaka, Takenaka maintains 20 overseas offices and generates annual sales of about $9 billion.

Seattle office property sales for the first seven months of 2017 totaled $2 billion, a 35 percent decline from the $3.1 billion sold during the first seven months of 2016, according to Savills’ Q3 2017 Seattle office sector research report.

The Seattle CBD office market reported an overall vacancy rate of 5.9 percent and an overall asking rental rate of $40.63 per square foot (psf) in the third quarter of 2017, according to Cushman & Wakefield. Overall vacancy, down 80 basis points from a year ago, was below 7 percent for the sixth straight quarter. Overall rent, up $0.88 from a year ago, was above $40 per square foot for the third straight quarter. Approximately 1.2 million square feet leased, bringing the year-to-date total to more 3.8 million square feet.