SINGAPORE – Commerz Real has sold its 71 Robinson Road property to SV Robinson for $655 million. SV Robinson is a real estate investment company which is a member the Sun Venture group of companies.

The sale was done through its open-ended real estate fund hausInvest, Commerz Real said on Tuesday. Commerz Real was also advised on the sale by CBRE and JLL, with law firm Dentons providing legal consulting, and EY for tax consulting.

The move comes weeks after a report on Sun Venture being granted exclusive due diligence with a view to buy the 15-storey office block, The Business Times understood at the time.

It was also reported that the property is running at full house with an average monthly passing rent in the low-$10 per square foot range, with tenants including CommerzBank, Visa, Ogilvy and WeWork. WeWork has leased three floors since 2017.

Commerz Real purchased the property for its fund in 2008. The building has 13 storeys with around 22,000 square metres of office space, along with two storeys with parking spaces.

It has a net lettable area of 237,644 square feet, sits on a site at the corner of Robinson Road and McCallum Street, and has nearly 74 years’ balance lease. It was completed 11 years ago and deemed to have Grade A specifications.

The office block also stands on the site of the former Crosby House, which Singtel sold in 2006 to a Lehman Brothers and Kajima Overseas Asia partnership.

Commerz Real global head of transaction management Henning Koch said: “We have utilised the market and leasing situation to attain an extremely attractive market price for our investors. Asia remains an interesting market for new acquisitions for hausInvest.”

CBRE managing director of capital markets Jeremy Lake added that top bids were all very close, reflecting the positive outlook which local and foreign investors have for the office investment market.

“71 Robinson Road is a very high-quality building with bluechip tenants, attributes which investors identified very quickly. The net yield in year one is in the region of 3.5,” he said.

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