TIAA subsidiary Nuveen Real Estate has sold a Washington, D.C., office building nearly two years after putting it on the market. Tourmaline Capital Partners paid $118 million for the 12-story, 350,787-square-foot asset at 1401 H St. NW.
Tourmaline also secured an $88 million loan from Morgan Stanley Bank for the purchase, according to the Washington Business Journal, which was the first to report the transaction.
The price is more than half of what Nuveen Real Estate, then operating as TIAA, paid for the building in 2006. Back then, the asset traded for $205 million, according to CommercialEdge.
READ ALSO: DC Office Investment Picked Up Steam in 2024
In June 2014, the property also known as City Center became subject to a $115 million loan held by Prudential Financial, the same source shows. That note was set to mature in June 2029.
Completed in 1993 and most recently renovated in 2021, the 12-story building has floorplates of 31,000 square feet. The LEED Platinum-certified property is described on Tourmaline’s website as a hub for advocacy groups, nonprofits, lobbyists and governmental affairs organizations.
More Nuveen D.C. dispositions
Nuveen Real Estate listed the property in 2022 with Cushman & Wakefield. It was not the only D.C. office building the firm was looking to sell.
In December, four of the firm’s D.C. assets were sold to former joint venture partner Norges Bank Investment Management as part of an eight-property, $976.8 million deal. NBIM, which already owned about half the interest in the properties, took full ownership of the 3.7 million-square-foot office portfolio valued at $1.95 billion at the time.
The dispositions come at a time when the D.C. office market has been struggling with high levels of vacancy and availability. While there were some signs of increased leasing in the fourth quarter of 2024, with JLL and CBRE both recording positive net absorption after 10 quarters of net occupancy loss, it’s unclear now how the market will fare with the Trump administration cutting the federal workforce.
Tourmaline portfolio
The acquisition of 1401 H St. NW is Tourmaline’s first foray into the Greater Washington, D.C., market. The firm, founded in 2021, has closed $3 billion in transactions and manages about 4.5 million square feet of space.
In October 2023, Tourmaline and joint venture partner Monarch Alternative Capital acquired 801 Brickell, a 28-story, 412,000-square-foot office building in Miami from Nuveen Real Estate, in a deal that was valued at about $250 million. The mixed-use property also has more than 32,000 square feet of retail space.
A year earlier, Tourmaline and Monarch had partnered on the purchase of The Esplanade, a four-building office complex totaling 906,459 square feet in Phoenix. The deal was valued at $385 million.
Other properties in Tourmaline’s portfolio include One South, a 925,998-square-foot office building in Charlotte, N.C., and Citigroup Center, an 822,826-square-foot property in Miami.
