Orange County’s office market saw some big changes last quarter, and not all of the trades are recorded in these charts of the top sales. With many office landlords struggling under the weight of empty buildings in a tough commercial real estate market, a number of sales,many reported to be bargains,are missing from CoStar’s data because the actual sales price is not officially disclosed to the research and marketing group.
In some cases, Business Journal sources have given ballpark figures for these office sales that would make them the largest of the third quarter.
Topping the Business Journal list is Maguire Properties Inc.’s Main Plaza office complex in Irvine. The two 12-story towers totaling 607,000 square feet sold for $211 million to real estate investor Shorenstein Properties LLC. Despite the price of $348 per square foot, Maguire Properties took a $51.9 million charge on the sale because it cost the company so much to maintain the building since its 2007 purchase from Blackstone Group LP.
Maguire Properties didn’t do much better on its sale of City Plaza to Hudson Capital LLC. The 327,000-square-foot office tower sold for less than $55 million, according to sources, which is about half of what Maguire Properties paid for it in 2007.
The sale was said to be initiated by the property’s lender, so Hudson Capital essentially bought the loan on the building with Maguire Properties chipping in $1 million to get the deal done.
Coming in at the second and third largest office sales of the third quarter are the sales of Centerpointe La Palma and Orange Financial Center, both previously owned by Arden Realty Inc. While no financial details on either sale were disclosed, sources say the 600,000-square-foot Centerpointe La Palma complex likely sold for at least $100 million. The majority of the complex was bought by Boston-based TA Associates Inc.,two of the smaller buildings at the complex weren’t included in the sale.
The three-building Orange Financial Center, which includes 312,000 square feet of office space, sold to a group of local investors for about $50 million.
,Julie Leupold
