Texas investor pays $43.95 million for portfolio of Triangle office buildings

The real estate arm of investment bank Goldman Sachs has bought a portfolio of six Triangle office properties for $43.95 million, according to Wake County property records.

The Archon Group, based in Irving, bought the buildings from Duke Realty, which listed the portfolio for sale in August.

The properties include 427,000 square feet spread across four buildings in West Raleigh, one in Cary and one in North Raleigh. The buildings, all built between 1986 and 2000, were 83 percent leased at the time Duke put them on the market.

The sale is part of the Indianapolis-based real estate investment trust’s strategy of increasing its industrial and medical office portfolio while reducing the number of office assets it owns.

The properties bought by Archon accounted for about 12 percent of Duke’s office portfolio in the Triangle. Last fall, Duke paid a little over $60 million for the Greenfield North business park in Garner and two industrial properties in Durham.

Duke now owns about 3 million square feet of office space in the Triangle and nearly 3 million square feet of warehouse space.

The Archon Group has about $59.1 billion in assets under management.

Duke was one of two major Triangle landlords that announced this summer plans to put a sizable portfolio of office properties up for sale. Developer Gregg Sandreuter’s Cary real-estate firm, Hamilton Merritt, wants to sell a portfolio of 12 suburban office buildings in the Triangle.

That portfolio accounts for about 75 percent of Hamilton Merritt’s Triangle assets.

The decision by landlords to sell in bulk reflects the fact that more institutional investors are trying to quickly gain a foothold in the Triangle. Packaging properties together is a way to better market those assets to such buyers.

The six buildings involved in Duke’s sale to Archon include: 5540 Centerview Drive, 5565 Centerview Drive, 801 Jones Franklin Road and 5520 Capital Center Drive in West Raleigh; 6501 Weston Parkway, in Cary; and the Brook Forest 1 building, 1616 Millbrook Road, in North Raleigh.