Chalk up another medical office building sale.
A husband and wife team have paid $7.5 million for Wilderness Court, a 38,765-square-foot Santa Ana medical office building at 1920 E. 17th St.
Wilderness Court, which was built in 1979, sold for $193 per square foot. The buyers weren’t identified by name, according to brokers who handled the sale.
The building sold for less per square foot than other recent medical office sales. But the sale shows that a flurry of recent buying and selling is making its way to older buildings that may not be right next to hospitals.
The 17th Street building is about a mile from Western Medical Center-Santa Ana. It’s full with tenants including AMVI/Prospect Medical Group Inc., which manages a network of doctors serving CalOptima, the county agency that manages care for state Medi-Cal patients.
Matthew Kipp of Marcus & Millichap’s Real Estate Investment Brokerage Co.’s Newport Beach office represented the seller, a group of five Northern California families that had owned the building since 2002. Rich Lee Real Estate in Yorba Linda represented the buyers.
Kipp and fellow broker Kevin McNeil represented the seller and buyer in a $7.3 million sale of the 33,070-square-foot Warner Village Medical Center near Fountain Valley Regional Hospital Medical Center. The building sold for $320 a square foot.
With medical office space tight, investors “are bullish on rental growth,” Kipp said.
This year has seen a number of medical office deals, both for land and buildings. The sector is hot, with vacancy rates generally hovering around 1%, and space near hospitals commanding premium rents.
In late August, Universal Properties Inc., a Michigan owner and manager of medical real estate, paid $15.3 million for a 35,825-square-foot Newport Beach medical building at 1501 Superior Ave. The site sold for $427 a square foot and ranked as one of the county’s largest medical office deals.
Several medical office buildings are going up around the county.
In Orange, more than 200,000 square feet of medical space is coming near St. Joseph Hospital-Orange. That includes a 131,000-square-foot medical building and an 87,000-square-foot cancer center. Pacific Medical Buildings, a San Diego company, is overseeing the construction.
In Fullerton, early work on Providence Center, which mixes medical and retail space, is under way west of St. Jude Medical Center. More than 100,000 square feet of Providence’s space is going to be offered to doctors, according to developer Accretive Realty Advisors Inc. of Newport Beach.
Newport Avenue Medical Plaza, a 20,935-square-foot building on Newport Avenue in Tustin, is set to open later this year. ACS Development Group of Irvine is developing and building the plaza.
Pacific Medical Plaza, a four-story, 75,000-square-foot medical office building in Costa Mesa not far from Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, is in the final stages of construction. Irvine-based Brown Associates is developing the $18 million project on the site of a former trailer park.
And Lake Forest-based Enterprise Commercial Development Inc. earlier this year paid $13 million to The Irvine Company for 4.2 acres zoned for medical office use in the Irvine Spectrum. That land sold for $3 million an acre, on the higher end of local land sales.
Enterprise is planning a three-story, 67,000-square-foot medical condominium complex targeting dentists, psychologists and other types of doctors.
_________________________________________________________
|
|
||
|
Tustin building: dates back to 1957 |
Medical Space For Sale
A medical office building in Tustin is up for sale at $2.3 million,or $460,000 per each decade of the building’s 50-year lifespan.
The building, at 661 W. First St., is on the market for $259 per square foot. It’s full with tenants including the Tustin Speech Center and two doctors’ offices.
Potential buyers could be local, small investors, said Steve Economos of NAI Capital Inc., who’s representing the seller.
Lorena and Scott Post own the building, according to real estate market tracker CoStar Group Inc.
The Tustin site is one of the older medical buildings that has come on the market,it was built in 1957 and isn’t all that close to any hospital, Economos said.
NAI’s Web site said it sees “tremendous upside expected in medical lease rates in coming years.”
“I’d say it’s good and getting better,” Economos said of the medical office building market. “There’s increased demand.”
,Vita Reed
