Hines Real Estate Investment Trust Inc. has begun proceeding with its plan of liquidation.

This week, Preferred Apartment Communities Inc. acquired seven grocery-anchored shopping centers with 650,400 rentable square feet in Georgia, Florida, Texas and North Carolina for $158 million, about $243/square foot. Preferred purchased the properties through its wholly-owned subsidiary New Market Properties LLC.

Last week, Fortis Property Group, a Brooklyn, NY-based investor, acquired the signature Chase Tower at 2200 Ross Ave. in downtown Dallas from Hines REIT for an estimated $285 million.

Preferred Purchased Grocery-Anchored Portfolio

Center	Market	SqFt
Shoppes at Parkland	Parkland, Florida	145,720
Cherokee Plaza	Atlanta, Georgia	102,864
University Palms Shopping Center	Oviedo, Florida	99,172
Thompson Bridge Commons	Gainesville, Georgia	92,587
Sandy Plains Exchange	Marietta, Georgia	72,784
Heritage Station	Wake Forest, North Carolina	68,641
Oak Park Village	San Antonio, Texas	64,287

^{Source: Hines REIT}

“We are pleased to add two more Publix anchored centers, two more Kroger anchored centers as well as adding our first Harris Teeter, HEB and BJ’s Wholesale Club anchored centers to our growing Sunbelt portfolio,” said Joel T. Murphy, president and CEO of New Market Properties.

The deal marks New Market’s initial expansion into both North Carolina and South Florida markets.

“This is a transformative transaction for us in that we now own 30 grocery-anchored centers across seven states, Murphy added.

Nationwide Life Insurance Co. and Keybank financed the acquisitions providing a $97.7 million in first mortgage loans with the balance paid from Preferred Apartment’s available funds.

Five of the loans from Nationwide have a 10-year term and a fixed 3.45% interest rate. The sixth loan from Nationwide, which finances the Cherokee Plaza asset, is a 5 year, floating rate loan at 2.25% over the 30 Day LIBOR rate. The loan from Keybank for the Shoppes at Parkland is a 7 year loan with a fixed rate of 4.67%.

In the deal with New Market Properties, Hines has the option of selling its Champions Village shopping center to close separately in November.

Champions Village in Houston is the largest of the eight centers at 392,870 square feet; it also has the highest vacancy at 24%. All of the other properties have occupancies of more than 90%.

Fortis Completes Deal for55-Story, 1.3 Million-SF High-Rise
Fortis Property Group, last week, completed its purchase of the 55-story, 1.3 million-square-foot landmark tower in 2007 for $289.6 million. The Houston-based REIT put the building on the market in January following a $10 million renovation in 2015.

Andrew Levy, Elizabeth Malone, Chris Murphy and Todd Savage of HFF represented Hines in negotiations. J.J. Leonard and Matthew Wieser of Stream Realty Partners’ office division have been selected by Fortis to handle leasing efforts at the property moving forward.

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