SOHO China Ltd. is considering selling a majority of its commercial property holdings in deals that may fetch as much as US$8 billion, Bloomberg News quoted sources familiar with the situation as saying yesterday.

At least eight office towers in Beijing and Shanghai are being discussed as part of the planned sales, said the sources.

An initial batch of projects worth as much as US$3 billion is being shopped to potential buyers, the sources said. Sovereign wealth funds and private equity groups are among those being approached. Talks are still at an early stage and the final number of projects is still to be decided, the sources said.

The potential sales signal Soho China may be shifting away from the nation’s office market, which has been hit by declining rents and decade-high vacancy rates as economic growth slows. Beijing has suffered one of the biggest declines in office rent yields globally in the past three years, according to Savills Plc.

If completed in a single line, the deal would be China’s biggest commercial property transaction. China Overseas Land & Investment Ltd. paid US$4.4 billion for CITIC Ltd.’s property assets in 2016 as part of a government-backed restructuring, according to data from Real Capital Analytics.

However, Soho China will probably sell the assets in stages, the sources said.

Soho China’s properties were worth US$8.6 billion as of June 30, according to company filings. The company’s price-to-book ratio is near a record low of 0.3, suggesting the assets would be more highly valued in the private market.

The company has already started to offload some non-core real estate assets. In June, it began marketing individual floors in 13 properties for a combined US$1.1 billion. Last month, it sold parking lots under nine of its buildings for US$108 million to a Hong Kong private equity fund.(SD-Agencies)