PREIT Mall Portfolio Various Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern States

Savills represented Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust in the disposition of a portfolio of six regional malls totaling 3.3 million square feet. The malls are located in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Georgia and Tennessee.

The transaction was part of a strategic effort by PREIT to "prune" less productive, "non-core" assets from its portfolio. Recognizing the sub-prime quality of the assets, Savills presented the properties as "value-add" opportunities to prospective investors, carefully underwriting each asset, developing both a compelling marketing "story" for upside potential and also preparing concise counter-arguments to questions that were anticipated to come from investors during the marketing process. Savills also developed a marketing list that focused on those investment groups that were actively looking for value-add mall opportunities, a buyer universe with which Savills is very familiar -- and indeed has been instrumental in developing -- as a result of the many successful regional mall transactions that Savills has executed over the past several years.

Finally, in order to further maximize value for PREIT, Savills identified in each market local entrepreneurs and investors who could have a particular interest in a single property or in a geographic subgroup of properties, and therefore might be prepared to bid more aggressively for those properties even though they lacked the operating or financial capability to acquire the entire portfolio.

Savills' marketing approach proved highly effective and it achieved premium pricing for the assets.