While land and empty spec office prices are plummeting, there is hope for owner-occupants who need to squeeze some cash out of their property. The sale-leaseback deals happening today aren’t giving owners as much money as they would have just a few years ago, but they can still cash in a relatively large amount of equity, just as the New York Times Co. will in its arrangement with investment management firm W. P. Carey & Co. 
As the Commercial Proprty News rag reports:
The newspaper concern just entered into a sale-leaseback agreement involving the 750,000 square feet of office space it owns and occupies in the 1.5 million-square-foot Midtown Manhattan building at 620 Eighth Ave. For W. P. Carey, the deal means adding a stabilized two-year-old trophy asset to its portfolio; for the New York Times, it means pocketing $225 million while staying put in its digs. 
For owners with challenging markets to navigate, the challenge to improve liquidity can be met in many different ways and the sale-leaseback is often one of the simplest.
“The opportunity to acquire an asset of this quality at this pricing level is clearly a sign of the times,” a W. P. Carey spokesperson told CPN. “It is certainly driven by the fact that sale-leaseback is still an attractive option when other forms of financing are not available.” The Times will use the proceeds from the transaction to pay down long-term debt. As described in its annual report, the sale-leaseback deal is just one of a handful of steps the company–plagued by plummeting advertising revenue and the challenge of refinancing debt–is taking to improve liquidity. 
To see how your business can benefit from a sale-leaseback, contact me for an analysis of your property.