By Jon Peterson
New York City-based TIAA-CREF has increased its real estate exposure in the Seattle region with apartment and retail acquisitions.
Rich Kimble, senior director and head of Northwest Acquisitions for the buyer, declined to be interviewed or respond to e-mail questions for this story. He works out of the company’s regional office in San Francisco.
Its latest apartment acquisition was the $111 million purchase of the 284-unit Union Apartments complex in Seattle. The property is located at 901 Dexter Avenue.
The property is three years old, and it is located in the South Lake Union sub-market of Seattle. The seller of the property was Vancouver, Wash. -based Holland Partner Group. Holland also did not return several phone calls seeking comment for this story.
In addition to that, TIAA-CREF has also added some retail exposure in Seattle, according to a document from the Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation Board. A retail property in Seattle was one of four retail assets that the manager acquired for an aggregate purchase price of $90.9 million. The other assets were located in San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York City.
All of the four properties were acquired for the TIAA-CREF Core Property Fund. This is a core open-ended commingled fund formed by the manager in 2004. An open-ended commingled fund means that it’s always open to accept new capital commitments. This compares to a close-ended commingled fund, which has a specified time period to raise capital.
Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation stated in a document that the Core Property Fund has a net asset value of $1.5 billion, through the end of 2014. The loan-to-value ratio on its portfolio is 23.8 percent. The commingled fund is 31.73 percent invested in office buildings, 26.46 percent in retail, 23.66 percent in apartments and 18.15 percent in industrial.
The commingled fund’s portfolio is mainly split into properties located in the West and East regions in the United States. The West makes up 45.42 percent of the portfolio and the East 45.12 percent. The balance of the portfolio is located in the South.
Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation made a $50 million commitment into the Core Property Fund in December of 2012. The investor placed a value on this investment of $59.4 million, as of the end of 2014. The IRR return on this investment is 9.49 percent with a 1.18 equity multiple.
The Core Property Fund has a total of 59 investors in the fund. It has completed 33 transactions.
