Blackstone-backed Embassy REIT Eyes Large Office Parks

The Blackstone-backed Reit is looking at an asset size of anywhere between 2 million square feet to 10 million square feet for acquisitions. It is eyeing large scale office portfolios, which not only have high quality buildings, but a whole ecosystem of gymnasiums, food courts and open spaces. The key strategy is to acquire those assets which can attract best in class multinational technology occupiers and global active tenants who don’t mind paying high rentals. While the net operating income for the second quarter of FY21 grew 10 per cent year-on-year for the company at Rs 481 crore, rental collections for the quarter from office occupiers remained strong at 99.5 per cent, in-line with office rental collections of 99.7 per cent for Q1FY21. There were no rent waivers given to office occupiers. However, rebate was granted to food courts and ancillary retail tenants representing 1.4 per cent of annual rents, said the company. It signed 210,000 square feet leases during Q2 across 7 deals with an active lease pipeline of 265,000 square feet for the coming quarters.