Orange City Square, a four-building office and stores complex off the Garden Grove (22) Freeway, has traded hands for an estimated $130 million.
San Juan Capistrano investor and developer Birtcher Anderson Realty LLC bought the complex with General Electric Co.’s GE Asset Management.
Springfield, Mass.-based Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. sold the building. Sources peg the sale at about $335 per square foot.
The buildings are on a 14-acre site that runs along The City Drive South, just south of The Block at Orange. They include three mid-rise office buildings totaling 373,619 square feet. A fourth building counts 12,392 square feet of stores as well as a gym and auto detailing business.
It’s the first deal Birtcher Anderson has made with GE Asset Management, a big buyer of real estate.
It’s also the first local buy for Birtcher Anderson,led by longtime Orange County real estate veterans Arthur Birtcher and Bob Anderson,in nearly three years. The company has been largely looking to buy in San Francisco, Las Vegas and Phoenix in recent years, while selling buildings in Laguna Hills, Costa Mesa and Mission Viejo.
“We’ve been looking and actively chasing some (local) deals,” Chief Executive Anderson said. “But this ended up making sense for us. We see a lot of upside for the property.”
Birtcher Anderson expects to own the Orange City Square for some time, he said.
The largest of the three office buildings, at 770 The City Drive, formerly was home to subprime lender Acoustic Home Loans. The company leased about 67,000 square feet of space at the building before it went out of business in mid-2006.
Much of the former Acoustic space since has been leased by the complex’s remaining tenants, including a Walt Disney Co. unit, JP Morgan Chase & Co., Zenith Insurance Co. and J.D. Power and Associates.
Orange City Square is 86% full, Anderson said. Rents are about 30% below market rates, and about of a third of the leases are up in the next three years, he said.
Asking monthly rents at the buildings run about $2.85 per square foot, according to CoStar Group Inc.
A pullback by lenders has slowed down the pace of building sales during the past month.
The Orange City Square buy was largely unaffected and wasn’t repriced, Anderson said. Other deals have been repriced due to changing loan terms and market fluctuations.
The company used debt for about 65% of the buy, Anderson said.
Anderson called that “conservatively leveraged,” and said it made for an easier transaction.
Birtcher Anderson, like all investors these days, is keeping a close eye on the market. Its strategy now is to hold on to a few buildings it had been looking to sell a few months ago.
“We’re not going to sell now; we’re going to wait,” Anderson said. “There’s a definite sorting-out going on.”
