Recently accepted offers on a handful of high-profile developments in Greater Boston may just represent a turning point in the local investment sales market as developers, pension funds and real estate giants harken back to 2007 and line up to purchase core properties and office parks.

Owners of some of the highest quality, trophy-grade office properties to come to market in recent months – Downtown Boston’s 33 Arch St., Woburn’s Unicorn Office Park, and 125 and 150 CambridgePark Drive in Cambridge – have had their pick of buyers from numerous local, national and international bidders.

The recent activity has some industry insiders hopeful that the stalemate between owners seeking fair prices and buyers seeking top quality at bargain basement prices is easing. But not all are convinced the trend is sustainable.

Now’s The Time?

Debt and equity both are abundant and well-priced today compared to the dark days of 2008 and 2009, with spreads on debt very low, and sellers and buyers are meeting closer to the middle on prices, said Scott Jamieson, managing director for Jones Lang LaSalle.

That’s music to the ears of commercial real estate executives.

“For too long there’s been a stalemate in our marketplace,” Jamieson told Banker & Tradesman. “We had well-heeled owners with no impetus to sell into the marketplace, even though there was substantial capital wanting to place itself into the New England market. While I didn’t like the decisions they were making at the time, with hindsight … they were very smart. If they had forced transactions, they would have been at heavy discounts. We still have a strong, stable base of ownership.”

The greatly improving market fundamentals stand in stark contrast to the fall of 2008, a perfect storm of failing financial institutions and unavailable capital. But Jamieson said today’s market might feature 99 percent of market participants saying the bottom has been reached and we are trending in the right direction.

“Now is absolutely the time to buy,” he said.

Braintree-based Campanelli Cos. has been one of the more active local buyers in the last 18 months, focusing on the Route 128 suburban markets. The firm has acquired approximately 1 million square feet of space in three separate portfolios stretching from Billerica to Canton and Norwood. The firm bought at 30 percent to 40 percent of replacement costs, and paid roughly $30 million to acquire the properties.

“The opportunity was there to move them from B–minus and B properties to A–minus and A properties,” said Dan DeMarco, a partner with Campanelli.

Even since those acquisitions, however, prices have begun to shift.

“We think it’s still a good time to acquire, but the window’s closing,” DeMarco added. “Replacement costs … have probably gone up to 60 to 70 percent now. But there’s no question there’s more capital chasing it now.”

But in Downtown Boston, fewer investors are active since the supply cannot keep up with demand, said Frank Petz, executive vice president for Richards Barry Joyce & Partners, who ranked Boston as one of the top three capital markets in the country in terms of investor appetite, behind New York and Washington, D.C. But while the city’s fundamentals looks great on paper, he said, sales numbers are still down approximately 70 percent from 2007 and resemble sales volumes from 2001.

Few trophy properties have traded since the downturn began, with notable exceptions like the Hancock Tower and Bay Colony Corporate Center. Without more of those transactions, there isn’t much chance of moving from where we are now, with roughly 86 percent of closed deals worth less than $25 million.

“There’s a ton of demand from capital, but we’re not on the radar screen from a transaction volume standpoint,” Petz said. “We’re just not there with the supply.”

Big Deals

But recent deals may prove Petz wrong.

In Boston’s Financial District, the owners of 33 Arch St. – AREA Property Partners, of New York, and Montreal-based SITQ, a real estate investment unit of Canadian pension-fund manager Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec – have accepted TIAA-CREF’s offer of $368 million for the 600,000-square-foot asset, according to industry sources. TIAA-CREF also controls 99 High St. The deal is expected to see a cap rate lower than 5 percent. The building is 89.25 percent leased.

“It’s impressive that the asset could achieve that kind of pricing, and it’s indicative of the strength of the core Boston office marketplace,” remarked one industry executive about the 33 Arch St. deal, who also requested anonymity.

In the suburbs, Unicorn Office Park’s owner – a New York-based equity fund whose assets are managed by JP Morgan – went with an offer submitted by National Development. The Newton-based developer is expected to pay in the neighborhood of $80 million for the six-building, 640,000-square-foot office complex.

“[National Development has] a much more forward-looking viewpoint and can see pending improvements in the market which will result in meaningful rent growth … and when we look back in 12 to 24 months, it will prove to be a very wise decision,” the same source told Banker & Tradesman. “I think they saw the Bay Colony sale and what it achieved, and hoped to capture some of the momentum from that transaction.”

Finally, old friend The Blackstone Group has emerged as the winners of two foreclosed Cambridge properties at 125 and 150 CambridgePark Drive, which combine for roughly 440,000 square feet of space. Blackstone previously acquired the properties in 1999 for $84 million, before selling to JP Morgan in 2001 for $98 million.

Barclays Capital took the properties back at a foreclosure auction last year after the buildings were lost by a subsidiary of the Archon Group. Blackstone is expected to pay in the neighborhood of $80 million, far less than the $127.9 million Archon paid for both properties in June 2007, according to data obtained from The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.