An offshoot of investment giant TIAA-CREF has cashed in on a plum Boca Raton holding, netting $59.4 million for its One Town Center Road office building and garage.

MetLife Inc.’s Metropolitan Tower Life Insurance Co. subsidiary is the buyer.

The roughly 14 acres at One Town Center Road feature 200,858 square feet of office space, a 156,128-square-foot parking garage and a blue chip tenant: Tyco International Ltd., which last year inked a 10-year lease.

“It is one of those buildings that, almost no matter what you paid for it, you could look back in 10 years and say that you were pretty happy with that acquisition,” says Christian Lee, CB Richard Ellis executive vice president.

Last fall, the Miami broker represented TIAA-CREF in the sale of three office buildings in Miami’s Waterford corporate park.

Lee also brokered 2003’s $30 million sale of The Plaza in Boca Raton, where once again, TIAA-CREF was doing the selling and MetLife was doing the buying.

It’s not unusual for the investment concerns to bump up against each other.

Both firms are constantly adjusting their billion dollar-plus portfolios, and South Florida’s tight office market generates robust sale prices for sellers even as it ensures rental revenue for buyers.

TIAA-CREF’s Teachers Boca Properties II Inc. shelled out $30.8 million for the One Town Center parcel in 1997.

A year later, it paid $1.2 million for a nearby patch of land.

MetLife’s $59.4 million bill of sale for both is almost twice what TIAA-CREF paid.

Still, it’s a drop in the bucket compared with the insurer’s New York City apartment sale late last year.

MetLife pocketed $5.4 billion from the deal, believed to be the country’s single largest multifamily transaction - ever.

MetLife, which has been divesting trophy properties in recent years, intends to spread the new cash around.

“We expect to reinvest up to $1.2 billion of the proceeds in real estate investments,” said MetLife Chief Financial Officer Bill Wheeler in a third-quarter earnings presentation.

Says Lee: “Let the party begin.”

Source: www.palmbeachpost.com

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 21st, 2007 at 9:57 pm and is filed under Real Estate. Tags: Boca Raton CB Richard Ellis Florida insurance life insurance MetLife MetLife Inc. Metropolitan Tower Miami New York New York City Office Building Plaza Real Estate real estate investment real estate investments Richard Ellis South Florida . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.