Dealmaker: Gantry Secures $35M to Refinance Seattle-Area Office Building

Gantry, San Francisco, secured $35.4 million to refinance a five-story, 200,000-square-foot single-tenant office building at 1601 Lind Ave SW in Seattle suburb Renton, Wash.

Gantry Principals Mark Ritchie and Mike Wood and Associate Alex Saunders secured the permanent financing for the borrower, an entity controlled by Los Angeles-based BH Properties. They placed the 20-year fixed-rate loan with one of Gantry’s correspondent life company lenders.

Property ownership recently signed a long-term lease with the University of Washington Medicine Department of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology. The property will support education, laboratory, office and administrative uses.

Ritchie noted properties with a credit tenant in place continue to attract the best long-term financing options in today’s market. “While office, as a general sector, continues to endure levels of uncertainty from traditional lenders post COVID, single-tenant properties with substantial lease term remaining or ones able to support life science, lab and medical office functions enjoy an exception,” he said.

Wood called the subject property a case study of the traits long-term lenders look for during underwriting. “Particularly the long-term lease with a respected educational institution for the entirety of the asset,” he said. “With the economic climate shifting as we move into the second half of 2022, it is important to recognize rates for assets of this quality remain at generational norms, even as upward rate pressures emerge.”