BentallGreenOak Buys Pair of Seoul Office Towers for $297M

Seoul-based EDN Investment Management has sold a pair of mid-rise office towers in the South Korean capital to BentallGreenOak for KRW 385 billion ($297.3 million) amid volatile financial conditions in the local market.

The firm had acquired the GB I and GB II towers in Seoul’s Pangyo Techno Valley in April 2022 on behalf of a private fund, according to JLL, which advised EDN on the disposal alongside NAI Propertree and Deloitte.

A limited competitive tender resulted in the selection of a preferred bidder for the 2011-vintage office blocks, which span 57,680 square metres (620,862 square feet) of gross floor area, with data from MSCI confirming BentallGreenOak as the buyer.

“These are high-quality assets located in the most desirable office location in Pangyo Techno Valley, where leasing demand is high,” Chae Hun Chang, managing director of JLL Korea, said in a release.

Resilient Tech District

Located an 18-minute walk from Pangyo subway station, the 11-storey GB I and nine-storey GB II are part of a tech-centric office district that has boasted zero percent vacancy since 2018, according to JLL.

The property consultancy expects Pangyo’s position to be strengthened by the ease of securing talented individuals and comparably lower rents than Gangnam district, which features a similar tenant mix.

BentallGreenOak picked up the towers for more than KRW 6.6 million ($5,260) per square metre of GFA. JLL said investors in the private fund, including local brokerage SK Securities, were able to secure “abundant liquidity and profits in a short period of time” despite volatile market conditions.

“In (the) current market situation, where the risk of transaction termination is increasing due to the increasing market uncertainties and deterioration of the financial environment, our selective and intensive marketing efforts to target investors who have actual investment capacity and can execute, were critical (factors) in deriving the successful transaction within the timeline,” Chang said.

Market Pullback

The GB towers’ change of hands comes after Singapore’s Keppel Land and funds managed by Keppel Capital teamed up to buy an office block in Seoul’s Jongno-gu district for KRW 220 billion ($170 million) in the final weeks of 2022, sounding an upbeat note for a market that saw investors pull back on building acquisitions in the second half of the year.

The buyers paid a little over KRW 7 million ($5,413) per square metre of GFA for the 15-storey Samhwan Building, with local media reports identifying the seller as Hana Alternative Asset Management.

After soaring to a record KRW 54 trillion ($42 billion) in 2021, investment volume in South Korea’s commercial property market fell by 19 percent year-on-year to $26.8 billion in the first nine months of 2022 and tumbled 60 percent to $5.2 billion in the third quarter alone, according to data provider MSCI.

Following the collapse of Mirae’s planned $3 billion purchase of IFC Seoul from Brookfield in the third quarter, the final months of the year saw at least one other big-ticket office deal as KB Asset Management sold the 33-storey Jongno Tower to a REIT controlled by SK Group for KRW 621.5 billion ($431.7 million), translating to KRW 10.3 million ($7,100) per square metre.