The Bank of America Tower has sold for $542 million, according to a report in Real Estate Alert, a newsletter for institutional investors. At $695 a square foot, the deal would mark a record per-foot price for Houston, easily beating the previous record of $528 a square foot. The news shows that there’s a market for new, high-end office space even as Houston’s office market overall suffers from high vacancy rates.
The newsletter reported that the buyer was California teachers’ pension fund manager CalSTRS.
The 35-story tower at 800 Capitol opened this summer with 88 percent of its office space pre-leased. Originally called Capitol Tower, the 754,000-square-foot building was renamed the Bank of America Tower after the bank decided to consolidate its three downtown offices to 210,000 square feet in the project. Other tenants include Waste Management, Winston & Strawn and Quantum Energy Partners.
A lushly landscaped 24,000-square-foot “sky park,” a 35,000-square-foot community hub and culinary market and 10,000-square-foot conference and events center are among the amenities meant to attract tenants to space. According to the tower’s developer, Skanska, the LEED-certified tower uses 32 percent less energy than the typical office tower.
According to commercial real estate firm CBRE, 19.3 percent of Houston’s office space was vacant in the third quarter, and the average annual asking rate was $28.78 per square foot.
