The Lake Forest headquarters of healthcare provider Apria Healthcare Group Inc. has been sold to a local real estate investor for $19 million.
An affiliate of Irvine-based real estate investment and management firm PRES Cos. this month completed the purchase of a two-building office complex on Enterprise Court that’s fully leased to Apria in a deal that runs until early 2022.
The two-story buildings at the property total a little more than 100,000 square feet and sold for about $190 per square foot.
The property is on 7.2 acres in a business park a few blocks south of the Baker Ranch residential development.
Lexington Realty Trust, a New York-based property investor, sold the buildings, which it had owned since 2002, shortly after the property’s opening.
The offices were marketed by Jeff Cole, Ed Hernandez and Nico Napolitano with the Irvine office of Cushman & Wakefield Inc.
The property traded hands at a 7.9% capitalization rate, Lexington Chief Executive Will Eglin told analysts this month following the company’s latest quarterly earnings report.
Apria, which provides breathing treatments and durable medical equipment to patients in their homes, is Orange County’s 14th largest privately held company by sales, with 2014 revenues of about $1.1 billion, according to Business Journal data.
The company, which has about 500 employees in Orange County, was acquired in 2008 by private equity giant Blackstone Group LP in New York for $1.6 billion.
Blackstone was reported to have put Apria up for sale in late 2014, but a deal wasn’t completed.
The PRES Cos. acquisition of the buildings marks the second notable sale of a local medical company’s headquarters recently.
This month the Santa Ana headquarters of medical device maker Abbott Medical Optics sold to a San Francisco-based investor for $37 million (see real estate column, page 54).
Looking South
The purchase adds to a busy year of investments for PRES Cos., which also operates as Professional Real Estate Services Inc.
In February it paid a reported $20.5 million for 2700 N. Main St., a 12-story office next to the MainPlace Mall in Santa Ana.
Last October, PRES was part of a venture that paid $41.5 million for the TriCentre building in Orange, a 10-story office at the intersection of the Santa Ana (I-5) and Orange (57) freeways.
The Lake Forest acquisition is the first involving PRES reported in South Orange County in several years. Much of the company’s local deal making over that time has been in the northern part of the county.
The company’s buys in Anaheim, Brea, Orange and Yorba Linda have totaled close to $100 million since the start of 2014, according to property records.
One of the North County investments could soon see another change in ownership.
In 2014 PRES paid a reported $42 million for the three-building Brea Park Center and the single-building Brea Corporate Plaza, which total about 290,557 square feet. The three-story offices are about a mile east of the Orange (57) Freeway on Imperial Highway near the La Floresta mixed-use development.
The four-building portfolio recently was listed for sale by the Newport Beach office of HFF LP, according to brokerage data. An asking price for the buildings, which are about 85% leased, hasn’t been disclosed.
The Brea buildings were about 70% leased at the time of PRES’ 2014 purchase.
