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Lowell Sun loses $800,000 on sale of HQ
The Lowell Sun (also known as Lowell Publishing Company) finalized the sale of its headquarters at the American Textile History Museum on Dutton Street today by conveying the remaining portion of its premises (Unit 1 a/k/a the “Lowell Sun Unit”) to Manchester Property Group LLC of Shrewsbury for $1,300,000. The buyer financed the sale with a mortgage of $1,040,000 from Northern Middlesex Savings Bank. Last week, the Sun sold the other portion of its headquarters, Unit 506, to a third party for $210,000.
Taking these two sales together, the Sun received a total of $1,510,000.
The Sun had purchased these two units in a single transaction back in 2007 for $2,300,000.
If my math is correct, the Sun lost $790,000 on this six year investment.
It depends. How much will they pay for leasing back the properties needed to continue operations there? If it is $150K per year, they would have spent $900K to lease the properties over the 7-yr period, a net saving of $110K, less about $270K in property taxes over that period for a net loss of $160K. But there may be tax advantages for the paper loss on the property purchase/sale that would mitigate even that lower loss.