Buy high, sell low: GM may unload RenCen for the cash

[jamz]

Filed under: GM
One thing's for sure, General Motors is not very good at playing the real estate market. Last May the world's biggest automaker finally bought its world headquarters in downtown Detroit called the Renaissance Center for the sum of $626 million. It had initially bought into the complex of seven buildings back in 1996 for $75 million, but had continued leasing office space there until the purchase earlier this year. Here we are not five months later after the purchase and GM is reportedly considering selling the RenCen to raise $500 million fast.

Rather than selling the RenCen at a loss, the preferred plan reportedly would be to mortgage the property to one or both of Detroit's pension funds to the tune of $500 million, but seeing as they're both already heavily invested in downtown Detroit property, that's not likely to happen.

GM's ultimate goal is to quickly raise $5 billion by selling any non-essential assets, including things like the RenCen, HUMMER and its medium-duty truck business. If the RenCen were sold, GM would forego working out of a cardboard box by going back to leasing the office space it's currently using.

[Source: The Detroit News, Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty]

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