Affiliates of Newport Beach-based KBS Realty Advisors capped off a busy year of transactions by closing on the purchase of one Southern California property and the sale of an office complex in Chicago.
The company’s KBS Strategic Opportunity REIT Inc. said late last month that it partnered in the buy of The Burbank Collection, a 39,428-square-foot retail property in the San Fernando Valley.
The Burbank property traded hands for $12.8 million and was bought in a venture between the non-traded real estate investment trust and Santa Monica-based Goldstein Planting Partners LLC. The KBS affiliate owns 90% interest in the venture, according to regulatory filings.
The retail property, located in the Burbank Entertainment Village, was built in 2008 and is 57% leased to 11 tenants, including Pinkberry, Barney’s Beanery, Verizon and Panera Bread.
The Strategic Opportunity REIT aims to buy properties with more leasing risk than the other four non-traded real estate investment trusts KBS Realty manages. The Burbank deal comes less than a month after the REIT closed on a pair of office properties near Houston that traded for close to $105 million on a combined basis.
KBS Realty Advisors also has been involved in some notable sales of late, including the sale of Oak Creek Center, an 11-building office project in Lombard, Ill.
The buildings, totaling about 427,000 square feet, sold for $39.5 million, and were bought by a venture between two New York-based investors, Investcorp and Golub.
The real estate investor—in addition to the Burbank and Chicago deals—also is being rumored as the buyer for a big property in Minneapolis.
Reports out of Minneapolis are mentioning KBS in relation to one nine-figure deal in the Twin Cities area that is expected to trade soon.
The company’s KBS Real Estate Investment Trust is said to be the likely buyer of the 609,000-square-foot RBC Plaza, a 40-story office property in Minneapolis that comes with an attached 69,000-square-foot shopping center known as Gaviidae Common II, according to a report in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal.
The properties were put up for sale a few months ago by Toronto-based Brookfield Office Properties Inc., with an asking price near $130 million, according to trade reports.
KBS REIT paid about $54 million for another Twin Cities office tower in 2011.
Bascom Buys
Irvine-based apartment investor Bascom Group LLC has closed on the purchase of two out-of-town complexes for nearly $50 million, while also selling a property in Santa Ana valued at around $15 million.
The company—reported to be the 47th-largest apartment owner in the U.S., with about 25,500 units in its portfolio—said last month that it teamed up with New York-based Spirit Investment Partners LLC to buy a property known as Jefferson at 55/77 Water, in South Norwalk, Conn.
The 136-unit complex traded hands for a little less than $43.3 million.
The property includes 28,175 square feet of ground floor commercial space, which is currently home to the U.S. headquarters of Virgin Atlantic Airlines and Kayak.com, according to Bascom.
The property, located about 40 miles from Manhattan, was last acquired in 2007 for $51 million and was subsequently foreclosed upon by its mezzanine lender, the company said.
The Spirit-Bascom partnership was created to buy distressed and value-added multifamily assets.
Bascom also said last month that it paid nearly $6.2 million for a 96-unit complex in West Valley, Utah. The six-building complex, called Peppertree Park, is the 10th buy in Utah for Bascom, the company said.
Spirit was not involved in the Utah buy.
Bascom had made 13 buys in 2012 as of mid-December, according to Bascom Managing Partner Jerome Fink.
The company also recently sold off Sunset Ridge, a 100-unit complex at 1314 N. Harbor Blvd. in Santa Ana.
The property was sold to a Palos Verdes-based entity known as Sunset Ridge Investment LP.
Terms of the sale weren’t disclosed. An LLC controlled by Bascom acquired the complex in 2007, for a little more than $15.7 million, according to brokerage data.
Shane Shafer, from the Newport Beach office of Hendricks & Partners, brokered the Santa Ana transaction.
CLW Addition
Chris Sausser has been named senior vice president and director of Corporate Services for the Southern California office of CLW Real Estate Services Group, which has its local base in Newport Beach.
He’ll work with tenants on site selections and leases, as well as advise companies on their real estate portfolios, the company said. He is a former senior vice president at Jones Lang LaSalle’s local office.
