A majority of Boston’s 20 largest office properties recorded a decrease in assessed value year-over-year, the Boston Business Journal reported.
The city published its data this week, demonstrating more of the office fallout since the pandemic.
This is the first time since 2020 that more than half of Boston’s 20 largest office properties recorded a decrease in assessed value. While the drops were modest for most, Oxford Properties Group took the biggest hit with 225 Franklin Street, which had its assessment drop 11.3 percent year-over-year to $469.5 million.
Some property owners saw their assessments hold relatively steady from a year earlier, while some had assessments rise from 2023. HYM Investment Group’s One Congress, which opened last year, saw its assessment increase 34.3 percent, to $450 million.
Of the 20 largest offices in the city, the highest property assessment belonged to Tishman Speyer’s 125 High Street, which held at $928.1 million from year to year.
The combined value of all commercial property in downtown Boston increased slightly from last year, hitting $8.8 billion.
For some owners, assessed property values aren’t nearly as important as official sales when it comes to analyzing the post-pandemic office market. There’s not a treasure trove of data awaiting landlords at the moment, but anecdotal evidence doesn’t paint a pretty picture.
In September, real estate firm Synergy Investments purchased One Liberty Square, a 13-story office building in the city’s Financial District, for $45 million. That sale represented a 17 percent decrease from the property’s value just a decade earlier.
That deal was Boston’s largest office transaction in 18 months, in a reversal from pre-pandemic years when office building sales were brisk and prices were stronger.
— Holden Walter-Warner
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