A South Korean firm has paid $215 million for 810 Seventh St. NW, a Chinatown office building leased to the Department of Justice, a deal that contributed to roughly $6 billion in investment real estate deals in 2014.
An affiliate of IGIS Asset Management, based in Seoul, Korea, bought the eight-story property from German investment firm KanAm Grund for nearly $791 per square foot, according to the D.C. Office of Tax and Revenue. The sale took place roughly two years after the General Services Administration negotiated a 10-year lease renewal for DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs for nearly all of the 271,800-square-foot building.
The deal was just one in a remarkably strong 2014 for investment real estate deals. The year, as I highlighted Wednesday, included the sale of the first D.C. office building for more than $1,000 per square foot — the Thurman Arnold building as it prepares to lose one major tenant and potentially gain an equally large one — and another Korean buyer becoming the new landlord to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
This latest sale was recorded with the District on Oct. 3. As it turns out, though, KanAm first disclosed the deal in a June announcement that it would sell 810 Seventh as well as two other buildings in Canada and France to IGIS for a total of nearly $1 billion.
