Newport Beach-based Peregrine Realty Partners has made its first purchase in Orange County with a deal for a six-story office near Angel Stadium.
The commercial real estate firm recently closed on the purchase of Metroplex, a 104,903-square-foot office building at 2401 E. Katella Ave. in Anaheim.
The office, located on a 3.2-acre site just off the Orange (57) Freeway, traded hands for $18.6 million, or about $177 per square foot.
An undisclosed national pension fund adviser, listed in property records as 2401 Katella LLC, sold the property.
It was one of the larger office transactions in Central OC to close in the past quarter.
Metroplex was 96% leased at the time of its sale, according to brokers with the Newport Beach office of CBRE Group Inc. who worked on the deal.
Tenants at the office include engineering, finance and security consulting company Willdan Group Inc., which has its headquarters at the building and leases about 38,000 square feet there.
Monthly asking rents at the building run about $1.85 per square foot, according to marketing materials for the building. The property is certified as being environmentally friendly.
The building last traded hands in 2005, and the property had an assessed value of about $17 million at the time, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
The deal is the first in OC for Peregrine Realty, an investor in multitenant office and industrial properties throughout Southern California that was founded in 2009.
The company’s other properties include multiple offices in San Diego, Carlsbad and Glendale.
$3M to $50M
Peregrine’s website says the company is looking for buildings valued anywhere from $3 million to $50 million, and that it will consider stabilized and value-add properties as investments for its private and institutional clients.
The Metroplex deal “fit the sweet spot for Peregrine and their investors,” said CBRE Vice President Paul Jones, who represented the seller along with colleagues Bob Smith and Karen Pino.
The buyers were able to take advantage of an “aggressive debt market” to secure financing for the deal, according to Jones.
Three Principals
Peregrine, which has offices in Los Angeles and San Diego along with Newport Beach, counts three principals, Bradley Lofgren, G. Ryan Smith and Stephen Zotovich.
Lofgren was a former senior vice president at CB Richard Ellis— now known as CBRE—before founding Peregrine with Smith, a former business development officer at Newport Beach-based Buchanan Street Partners who also started the firm’s investment sales division.
Zotovich is the founder of Newport Beach-based commercial real estate investor ZMI Real Estate Inc., which became part of Peregrine in 2011.
Metroplex is believed to be the largest non-distressed office in Central OC to trade hands of late.
Distressed Deals
Among recent distressed deals: Bethesda’s CW Capital Asset Management last month took over ownership, via foreclosure, of Orange’s 3800 Chapman, an eight-story, 172,000-square-foot office across the street from The Outlets at Orange.
The property was last owned by Los Angeles-based MPG Office Trust Inc. The long-planned trustee sale of the building relieved MPG of the obligation to repay the $44.4 million mortgage loan secured by the property, as well as accrued interest on the mortgage loan, the company said.
Last of MPG
3800 Chapman was the last office in OC owned by MPG, which became the county’s second-largest office landlord following a 2007 portfolio buy near the peak of the last commercial real estate boom.
The subsequent five years saw the company—which previously operated under the Maguire Properties Trust name—pare back its OC office portfolio to pay off debt.
MPG disposed of local buildings with more than $350 million of debt tied to them last year, including the 500 Orange Tower and a pair of Brea properties, according to regulatory filings.
