Align Technology Inks 129K SF Lease

Align Technology (ALGN: 19.20 -0.62%) has signed a 7-year lease with Equity Office for two buildings on Orchard Parkway. The 129,000 square foot lease is for 86-months, and consists of two (2) 64,500 SF buildings located at 2560 Orchard Parkway and 2570 Orchard Parkway.
The terms of the lease are:

86 Months
First 2 Months Free
$1.00 NNN start [...]

Morgan Stanley Handing Back 1.2M Square Feet of SF Assets

As we indicated last month, Morgan Stanley is handing back the keys on billions of dollars worth (former worth, that is) of Class A San Francisco property. The properties are going back to the mezzanine lender, AREA Property Partners. The question now is what is AREA going to do with the assets considering that they [...]

Clock Ticking For Morgan Stanley Fund V

We had covered Morgan Stanley’s troubles in the recent past, including its walking away from its massive Crescent deal, and the looming troubles it is facing on the CNL deal (think Maui Prince), and the Blackstone/Equity Office assets it acquired at the top of the market.
WSJ has a piece on the CNL deal and Fund [...]

Wilbur Ross, Sam Zell, Richard LeFrak on CNBC – The Billionaire’s Roundtable

CNBC featured a two-part “Billionaire’s Roundtable” featuring Wilbur Ross, Sam Zell, and Richard LeFrak. Some of the slogans:
“Dilution is the Solution”, Owners in “Negative Leverage Purgatory”, “What Happens in Dubai, Stays in Dubai”.
The discussion tackles commercial real estate, newspapers, emerging markets, retail, and gold. CNBC also calls Sam Zell out on the comments he made [...]

Crescent Down, San Francisco EOP Assets To Go

In the news today is Morgan Stanley’s handing back of the keys on the Crescent Real Estate nightmare they acquired two years ago. The nightmare wasn’t that they were bad assets, the nightmare was the price paid for the portfolio and the subsequent fall in the market.
We were out in front of the Crescent deal. [...]

Sam Zell Optimistic on Economy

Sam Zell, of Equity Office fame, has come out indicating that the commercial real estate calamity is overblown. He is basing his premise on two things, one the workouts and other programs in place that are keeping a lot of deals from being sold, though one could argue on life support. The other is that [...]

Morgan Stanley to Take Hit on Crescent

Morgan Stanley was one of the most aggressive investors during this last boom cycle. Their activities included the acquisition of the EOP San Francisco portfolio for some $2.5B, and the August 2007 purchase of Crescent Real Estate Equities for $6.5B (if you include the debt), and other smaller deals such as providing the debt on [...]

Applied Puts Up For Sale 30-Acre Santa Clara Site

Applied Materials (AMAT: 12.63 -0.24%) has quietly put up for sale a 30-acre site in Santa Clara. The property is being offered unpriced. It’s an odd time to put the property up for sale considering the fact that they’ve carried it for a long time, including the last boom cycle where the land would have [...]

More Good News From Tishman

Standard & Poor’s has downgraded the credit rating of Tishman Speyer’s affiliate in Washington D.C. to D from CCC. In the world of debt, D means death.
The debt is backed by a portfolio of 26 properties with 5.5 million square feet that were formerly owned by CarrAmerica Realty Corp. and were purchased from Blackstone Group [...]

Sony Renews With Equity Office For Foster City Office

Sony, who had been in the market for quite some time, has decided to stay put in Foster City and has renewed it’s roughly 325,000 square feet lease with Equity Office. They were rumoured to be looking at sites up and down the 101 corridor, including the BEA/Oracle building in San Jose and Moffett Towers [...]