A midsize office next to Saddleback Memorial Medical Center in Laguna Hills has traded hands for the fourth time in a decade, selling for a price believed to be well under its peak market value.
An affiliate of White Plains, N.Y.-based investor True North Management Group LLC recently closed on the purchase of 24012 Calle De La Plata, a four-story office previously known as the Saddleback Financial Center. CoStar Group Inc. records show the nearly 73,000-square-foot building sold for about $12.2 million, or about $167 per square foot.
The deal is among the pricier office sales in South Orange County in recent months, outside of those for several larger Lake Forest buildings.
True North has made more than 35 investments valued at more than $500 million to date, according to the company’s website. The privately held investor isn’t known to have any other real estate deals in OC, though property records show the company investing in buildings in Ontario and Pleasant Hill, among other California properties.
An affiliate of San Mateo-based Glenborough LLC sold the Laguna Hills building, which it bought in 2007. The investor, which previously operated under the Glenborough Realty Trust name, paid a reported $20.5 million for the building near the peak of the last commercial real estate market.
The building, built in 1982, was about 90% occupied at the time of the 2007 sale but now has a roughly 60% occupancy rate. Tenants include California Bank & Trust and Scottrade.
The property is situated a few blocks from the San Diego (I-5) Freeway near the Laguna Hills Mall, as well as the medical center.
The site is zoned to allow about 30% of the building to be leased to medical tenants, but efforts have been made to allow about two-thirds of the building available for medical office use, according to marketing materials from the Voit Real Estate Services Inc., whose brokers sold the building.
The building’s proximity to Saddleback Memorial should make it an attractive option for medical tenants, according to Voit’s marketing materials.
General office rents in the building run about $1.85 per square foot per month, but medical office space in the area tends to run almost $1 per square foot higher.
The Laguna Hills building, which shares a six-story parking structure with some other offices in the area, has seen its share of sales over the past 10 years.
The building traded hands for a reported $11.1 million in 2002, when an investment fund run by Santa Ana-based Triple Net Properties Inc. bought the building.
Triple Net, whose business later combined into the operations of brokerage Grubb & Ellis Co., sold the building in 2004 to Mission Viejo-based Mammoth Equities, in a deal valued at $15.3 million. Mammoth sold the building to Glenborough in 2007.
Dan Vittone and Alan Pekarcik of Voit’s Irvine office represented the seller in the latest transaction, which closed last month.
