Blackstone sells Stamford portfolio for $830m.

The Blackstone Group has achieved another recordbreaking price for a piece of the Equity Office portfolio it acquired in it's $39 billion purchase of the company last month.

RFR Holdings, the New York-based private investment company led by Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs, has bought the EOP Stamford portfolio for a reported $830 million. The 1,675,000 s/f portfolio includes Canterbury Green, 177 Broad Street, 300 Atlantic Street and four buildings in the Stamford Plaza office development. Tenants include Cushman and Wakefield, CB Richard Ellis and publisher, Boardroom Inc.

A record-setting price in the city, market watchers say RFR is gambling on current Stamford rents continuing to escalate as the city rides the tail winds of a frenzied New York City market that has seen Class A rents spiral to an average of $70 psf in midtown. Rents in neighboring Greenwich, Conn., have broken the $100 psf barrier and the area in general has been buoyed by some major deals in the past few years, including the Royal Bank of Scotland headquarters project that will see the creation of the world's largest trading floor in Stamford.

Asking rents in the EOP Stamford portfolio are currently in the mid-to-high $30 psf range. Jeffrey Dunne, CB Richard Ellis tri-investment sales guru--who was not associated with the deal--commented, "They are looking at the upside of current rents and where they perceive future rents to be going. It seems like a good bet the rents will go up, but it's not an overnight thing and they have to look at the long-term outcome."

At $830 million, the sale equates to approximately $500 psf, a figure that shatters previous Stamford price tags and dwarfs the $334 psf deal Dunne achieved when he sold 225 Highridge Road to Reckson Associates in 2005.

However, if anyone can make those numbers work, it's RFR, which is built on a foundation of generating profit from undercapitalized buildings in good locations.

RFR established its operations in the United States in 1991 and, through various affiliates, now controls more than five million square feet of prime office and retail space in addition to approximately 2,500 luxury residential apartments. The company grew its office and retail portfolio primarily through acquisition and re-positioning of existing properties in prime New York City locations.

RFR did not respond to requests for comment by press time. Equity and Blackstone declined comment on the sale, the latest in a series of transactions aimed at offloading massive chunks of the EOP portfolio across the nation. Macklowe Properties recently paid a record $7.2 billion for eight New York buildings previously owned by EOP.