W&M Properties reports strong leasing - Brief Article

Class-A office leasing has remained strong during 2002 throughout W&M Properties' 2.5 million-SF Fairfield! Westchester County suburban portfolio, with the demand fueled by a diverse range of growing service businesses.

Since the beginning of the year, W&M has completed 14 deals totaling more than 82,000 SF of offices, including five new leases, six renewals and three transactions comprising both an expansion and term extension. All of these deals involved successful service firms often referred to as "value-added" enterprises.

At W&M, we have long believed that the principal strength of the Fairfield and Westchester County Class A office markets derives primarily from the growth of local businesses and, to some extent, on the expanding presence of suburban branch offices of firms whose operations are headquartered in New York City.

These tenants typically require less than 15,000 SF of space, and their businesses operate in a wide variety of fields, including healthcare, insurance, money management and investment, accounting, legal services, employment, marketing and consulting, to name a handful. At W&M buildings, year to date, more than half of our completed deals have been with financial services firms, while the remaining leases involved companies providing management consulting, information technology, healthcare and other services.

Several of our deals stemmed from tenants renewing and/or expanding at our buildings. To accommodate these tenants, W&M reaches out to, and works proactively with, those building occupants desiring to shed excess, underutilized office space.

Pursuant to W&M's classic "win-win-win" recapture and relet transaction, such space is then taken back and relet directly, either to a growing tenant, or to a new lessee, to the benefit of the consolidating company, the expanding company, and the landlord. Because of W&M's business strategy of only acquiring multi-tenantable Class A buildings, we are able to meet our tenants' changing needs with relative ease.

One of the key reasons we are able to attract and retain stable, credit-worthy tenants is our long-standing strategy of maintaining top-of-the-line Class A office buildings that provide the highest quality and broadest range of amenities and services. In-demand building features include on-site fitness centers and dining facilities, ample parking, state-of-the-art telecommunications services, conference centers, sundry shops, ATMs, and round-the-clock security.

Another reason for our record of attracting prime tenants is our ability to price available Class-A space aggressively for qualified tenants. For instance, at MerrittView, in Norwalk, Conn., and 711 Westchester Ave., in White Plains, N.Y., where we have the largest available blocks of space, we are able to offer tenants very competitive deals. How so? First, these properties were acquired at well below replacement cost. Second, W&M has only low levels of debt on its properties. And third, space is being made available by expiring leases of tenants that were paying rates well below today's market value. As a result, W&M can be flexible in lease terms without cutting corners on amenities and services.

Any building owner/manager wishing to attract the area's top companies must be willing to offer top tier amenities at competitive rates. This is the key to attracting and maintaining a roster of high credit tenants in this market.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Hagedorn Publication
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group