Boston Properties buys Hancock Tower

BOSTON – Boston Properties Inc. completed its $930 million acquisition of the John Hancock Tower, New England’s tallest building, as the biggest U.S. office real estate investment trust expands in its home market, Bloomberg News reported last week.
The REIT paid $289.5 million in cash and took over about $640.5 million in debt, according to a statement from the company. It expects to record about $3 million in costs, with about $1 million to be expensed in the current quarter.
High-quality office towers in attractive markets are luring investors after the 2008 credit crash froze lending and sent values tumbling. Prices for eastern U.S. office buildings gained 22 percent in the third quarter from a year earlier, Moody’s Investors Service said. A gauge of overall commercial property values rose less than 1 percent in the same period.
Boston Properties CEO Mortimer Zuckerman said in October that the 790-foot Hancock Tower was “right in our sweet spot.”
The Hancock tower’s seller was a joint venture between affiliates of Normandy Real Estate Partners and Five Mile Capital Partners LLC. The partnership bought the building at auction for $661 million, about half of what previous owner Broadway Partners paid for it in 2006. &#8226