Nelson Mills, president and CEO of Columbia Property Trust (NYSE: CXP), joined REIT.com for a video interview at REITWeek 2017: NAREIT’s Investor Forum at the New York Hilton Midtown.
Columbia sold $500 million of assets in the first half of the year, completing a three-year transition in which it disposed of $3.3 billion in assets, Mills said. While Columbia still has three properties in its portfolio that are not located in its core markets, there are no plans to sell them this year, he added.
Turning to Columbia’s main markets, Mills noted that growth in New York and San Francisco has slowed. However, “we still see plenty of runway there for rent growth.”
Washington, D.C., is a “tougher situation, but we really like the longer-term prospects there,” Mills said.
Although Columbia is not expecting growth in the broader office sector to be as strong as it has been in recent years, it remains stable, Mills observed.
“The office sector has traded off a bit relative to other sectors, so we have high expectations for 2017 and 2018,” Mills added.