CONNECTING THE DOTS... Austin Oaks Timeline and Purchase History

Did Austin Oaks' purchaser (Spire Realty) overpay in Q4 of 2013?  

TIMELINE:  

June 2011 - Local firm buys Austin Oaks from LNR  
The 12-building Austin Oaks office complex in North Austin has changed hands again — this time going to Riverside Resources Corp. for $35 million.

The Austin developer, investor and real estate manager took the property from Miami-based LNR Partners LLC on May 18, according to documents from the Travis County clerk’s office.

LNR bought the property in October fromAspen Growth Properties at a foreclosure auction after Aspen couldn’t rework terms of its $48 million loan. LNR paid Aspen $25 million for the property, which is at 7718 Wood Hollow Drive near Mopac Expressway. It has 442,000 square feet, of which about 82 percent is occupied. It has 147 tenants and was built about 35 years ago.

A spokeswoman for LNR in New York couldn’t speak specifically about the recent deal, and representatives of Riverside Resources couldn’t be reached.

Local observers said the $10 million jump in price was due partly to more than 20 bids made during the seven months the property sat on the market. Sources said some of those bids, many of which came from outside Austin, helped push the price upward.

It’s more evidence that savvy investors across the country are increasingly interested in so-called second-tier cities such as Austin. And among second-tier cities — anything outside New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston — Austin tops many lists.

October 2013 - Dallas investors grab another chunk of Austin office market

Spire Realty Group LP of Dallas is increasing its footprint in Austin with the purchase of the Austin Oaks office complex at Mopac Expressway and Spicewood Springs Road.

The 31-acre campus, which was built in 1973, includes 12 buildings encompassing 445,322 square feet. The seller was 2011 Austin Oaks Ltd., an entity formed by Austin-based Riverside Resources Inc. The purchase price was not disclosed. Riverside paid $35 million for the complex in May 2011.

The office park is the 11th-largest multi-tenant office in Austin, based on recent ABJ research.

Spire also owns the 21-story Chase Tower at 221 W. Sixth St. in downtown.


September 2014 - Anomaly or Trend.... 

Want to buy an office building in Austin? Prepare to pay a premium, report says. Transwestern provided the Austin Business Journal with cumulative data for the first six months of 2014. There were 27 office investment sales including properties or portfolios valued at more than $2.5 million.

Total volume for six months was $431.7 million for an average price of $243 per square foot.

CoStar Group, which has different parameters, pegged the total volume in Austin for the first six months of 2014 at $484.8 million. With an estimate of 3.5 million square feet trading hands, CoStar calculates the price per square foot in Austin much lower — $138.

CoStar’s data also indicates a dramatic drop in the amount of office investment deals in the past two quarters — $137 million in the second quarter and $348 million in the first quarter.

Compare that with $818.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2013, which was the highest quarterly total since the third quarter of 2012 when nearly $1.1 billion in office investment deals were closed locally.

Sure looks like it. 
The AustinOaks PUD Application appears to be a business attempt to recoup a SPECULATIVE OVERPAYMENT by an out-of-town Dallas developer at the EXPENSE of our quality of life and community.  Their mistake is not our problem to solve.