By Meghan Hall
While sales volume for traditional office space has declined over the past several months, medical office sales are continuing to close throughout the Puget Sound. In a recent transaction that was recorded on July 23rd, Nashville-based Healthcare Realty snapped up a Tacoma medical office building and affiliated surface parking for $11.025 million. According to public documents, the seller was Tacoma-based Pacific Northwest Eye Associates.
The first parcel includes a 21,853 square foot office building originally constructed in 2010. Northwest Eye Investors originally purchased the property in June of the same year for $1.7 million. Just adjacent to the property on the second parcel—which totals about 0.34 acres—is a surface parking lot. The final parcel, also undeveloped, is slightly larger at about 0.4 acres.
The acquisition is not Healthcare Realty’s first in the Puget Sound region, and over the past six months, the publicly-traded REIT has been fairly active. In July of 2019, Healthcare Realty spent $30.5 million to acquire an office property across the street from the Northgate Mall in Seattle. The seller of the building was Alpine Ridge Group, LLP. Healthcare Realty paid about $390 per square foot for the 78,173 square foot building.
Shortly after in November of 2019, Healthcare Realty purchased a 36,360 square foot medical office building in Kirkland for $22.8 million. Healthcare Realty acquired the asset from JCR Development, a family-owned real estate development company based in the area.
Just a month later, in December, Healthcare Realty purchased the Highmark Medical Center in Issaquah. The company bought the property from Sumner, Wash.-based Highmark Investments for $24.3 million, or about $528 per square foot. The Class A medical facility features two floors of clinical and office space over ground floor parking.
According to its website, Healthcare Realty specializes in the development of medical offices throughout the United States and is the first REIT to specialize in medical office assets. As of March 2020, the REIT had an enterprise value of $5.3 billion and owned 212 properties across 25 states. Its assets total 15.8 million square feet and are largely within proximity of major healthcare providers. In Washington, its assets are close to MultiCare, Providence Health Services, UW Medicine, and Evergreen Health, among others. Healthcare Realty also has assets in California, Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia and Florida.
