The Thomas Duke Company is pleased to announce the sale of the Novi Office Centre in Novi, Michigan. The property is irreplaceably located, on Novi Rd, just north of I-96 on a out-lot to Twelve Oaks Mall, in the center of Novi’s commercial business district and surrounded by national retailers and other amenities. This is the first time the property was brought to the market and we generated a tremendous amount of activity from potential purchasers.
If there was an obstacle to the sale of the Novi Office Centre it would be buyer sentiment on the need for office space in the post-pandemic world. It is our belief that office space is here to stay and stories of its demise are greatly exaggerated. It will change to some extent and there will be certain industries that reduce their footprint, but collaboration in person is still essential for most businesses, as evidenced by the amount of office sale transactions we’ve participated in these last two years involving purchasers who share this belief.
We began marketing the property and generating several offers rather quickly, that unfortunately did not meet the seller’s expectations. We then pivoted to an auction format for the sale, anticipating that strength in numbers would get us to the right purchase price and terms. The offers under the auction format came close, but still did not hit the threshold the seller had in mind for the building.
Undeterred, we came out of the auction process ready to solve any issues we felt were precluding the building from trading at our client’s expectations. We reached out to the largest tenant in the building and were able to negotiate an early five year extension to their lease, which left only a small vacancy in the building.
Our marketing strategy and ability to adapt without dwelling worked and we sold the property to a repeat purchaser of ours at a price and terms that met our client’s goals.
