By Daniel J. Sernovitz – Staff Reporter, Washington Business Journal
August 27, 2019
An online auction site is slated to open bidding at $4.5 million next month for a Fairfax County office complex that sold during the height of the real estate market in 2006 for nearly five times as much.
RealInsight Marketplace will kick off the auction Sept. 10 on behalf of Mission Capital Advisors LLC. The real estate capital markets firm was brought in by special servicer CWCapital Asset Management to help dispose of the Greenbriar Corporate Center after it was foreclosed on earlier this year. The prior owner of 13135 Lee Jackson Highway, an affiliate of North Bethesda-based Guardian Realty Investors LLC, defaulted on the debt it took out in 2006 to buy the property for $21.4 million, according to loan servicing notes and Fairfax County land records. It is now assessed at nearly $13.6 million.
Representatives for Guardian could not be reached for comment.
Kyle Kaminski, a director with Mission Capital, said he hopes the online auction will tap into a larger pool of investors looking for value-add properties like Greenbriar than traditional marketing would. Greenbriar, located just west of the Route 50 interchange with the Fairfax County Parkway, is a 116,581-square-foot property developed in the mid-1980s.
“I think it’s mostly a function of the market is active right now. There’s lots of groups out there paying good money for deals,” Kaminski said. “The auctions themselves tend to lend themselves well to situations like this, and this one happens to be one that has some positive momentum.”
Commercial real estate firm CBRE, handling leasing for the property, recently inked an 8,700-square-foot lease with Virginia Surgery Associates. As of July 31, Greenbriar was about 77% leased to tenants including Fairfax Pediatrics Associates, Long & Foster Real Estate and Re/Max Premier.
Greenbriar is one of a dwindling number of properties sold or renovated in the lead-up to the Great Recession with debt that was bundled into a larger pool of commercial mortgage-backed securities, or CMBS. Much of that debt has since come due, and many of the properties impacted have either been sold at deep discounts, foreclosed on, or given back to their lenders as deeds in lieu of foreclosure.
The Donohoe Cos. recently resolved the outstanding debt on 4000 Wisconsin Ave. NW, which was threatened with foreclosure, and is forging ahead with a mixed-use redevelopment to be called Upton Place. Douglas Development Corp. earlier this year paid $8.2 million for a Fair Lakes office building that sold in 2006 for $62 million.