Watergate office for sale once more

Bloomberg

BentleyForbes, the real estate investor that bought the office and retail portion of the Washington towers in 2005, hired investment banking firm Savills to market the property.

BentleyForbes put its stake in the complex, site of the bungled 1972 burglary that led to Nixon’s resignation, up for sale a year ago, and pulled it from the market last May. Buyers wouldn’t pay what the company was seeking, Chief Executive Officer David. W. Cobb said at the time. He wouldn’t say then how much Los Angeles-based BentleyForbes was asking.

"It’s $100 million plus," Arthur Milston, a New York-based Savills managing director working on the sale, said in an interview last week. "It’s a question of what is the plus equal to." The sale will include the 198,538-square-foot Watergate office tower, 66,034 square feet of retail space, and a 314-space underground parking garage, Savills said in a statement.

The property is more than 90 percent leased, with the office portion being about 95 percent leased.

The office, retail and parking garage likely would have sold for about $120 million last year, said Dan Fasulo, managing director of Real Capital Analytics, a New York-based property-research firm. The property is likely to go for less than that now because of the global crisis, he said.