A New Jersey investor quietly went on a buying spree in Boston’s Back Bay this week, scooping up roughly $50 million worth of retail and office space along Newbury Street and Massachusetts Avenue. The haul includes a prominent corner building at Massachusetts Avenue and Newbury Street plus a run of storefronts along Newbury’s upscale retail strip, forming one of the larger clusters of single-week retail sales on the corridor this spring.
As reported by Bisnow, The Real Estate Equity Co., which operates as Treeco, paid about $50 million for a portfolio that includes 93-97 Massachusetts Avenue, 375 Newbury Street and roughly a dozen other retail and office suites, with deeds recorded on Friday. Public records cited in the report list individual sale prices of about $9.5 million for 108 Newbury Street, $8.2 million for 292-296 Newbury and $5.3 million for 304 Newbury.
Corner Building Got A Major Makeover
The Massachusetts Avenue and Newbury Street corner building, now home to a Room & Board showroom, was extensively renovated in 2014 with a four-story addition, a new facade and a second-floor terrace. Kensington Investment Company, the seller of that parcel, details the scope of the overhaul on its property page.
Buyer Profile: Treeco
Treeco (The Real Estate Equity Company) markets itself as owning more than $500 million in investment-grade properties across the Northeast, according to its website. The firm has been active in New England recently, and in April it closed on a Dick’s Sporting Goods property in Danvers for roughly $16 million, per the Boston Real Estate Times.
What It Means For Newbury
The purchases add to a flurry of high-dollar activity on Newbury Street this spring, slotting in alongside other big moves that have drawn investor attention to the corridor. Observers point to recent trades, including a roughly $114 million package of Newbury assets and last year’s $38 million Ralph Lauren purchase nearby, as evidence that institutional buyers still prize the street’s pedestrian traffic and strong demographics, as the Boston Business Journal notes…