Canada’s H&R REIT Agrees to Buy Houston Office Building for Record Price

H&R Real Estate Investment Trust (HR-U), the owner of almost 300 office, industrial and retail properties across North America, agreed to buy Hess Tower in downtown Houston for $442.5 million.

The 29-story office building, the newest tower in the city’s downtown section, is fully leased to New York-based oil company Hess Corp., Toronto-based H&R said in a statement today.

The price is a record for a Houston office building on a per-square-foot basis, according to Real Capital Analytics Inc., a New York-based property-data provider. The 844,763-square-foot (78,481-square-meter) tower was completed in June.

H&R said it has obtained a commitment for a $250 million mortgage with a 4.5 percent interest rate for the planned purchase, which has a capitalization rate of 6.6 percent. A capitalization rate is derived by dividing a property’s annual net operating income by its purchase price.

The company rose 0.6 percent to C$23.73 ($22.84) today in Toronto trading. H&R has 38 office, 117 industrial and 133 retail properties.

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Louis in Chicago at blouis1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kara Wetzel at kwetzel@bloomberg.net