Boston Properties drops out of Bank of America Center bidding

NEW YORK (Bloomberg) — Boston Properties Inc., in a further sign that prices
for trophy properties may have peaked, has dropped out of the bidding for San
Francisco’s Bank of America Center, saying the price is too high. “As excited
as we are about the San Francisco market, we felt it was a very large premium
to pay,” Raymond Ritchey, executive vice president of Boston Properties told a
group of investors at a real estate conference sponsored by Credit Suisse First
Boston. The sellers, according to Ritchey, are asking more than $500 a square
foot, or a total of about $900 million, for the 1.8 million square-foot complex
in downtown San Francisco. That’s almost as high as the $540 per square foot paid
for New York’s Seagram Building late last year, which was a record for New York.