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.
For shoppers and small retailers, the wave of institutional sales could translate into steadier ownership but also more pressure on rents as new landlords look to lock in national or regional tenants that can pay a premium for Newbury exposure. Local brokers say the corridor's tourist draw and affluent nearby residents keep it firmly on the radar of deep-pocketed buyers, so the leases and tenant mixes at the buildings Treeco now controls will be worth watching in the coming months.
