Newport Beach-based Buchanan Street Partners has made its largest reported local purchase in more than a year for an office complex a few miles outside Orange County in Diamond Bar.
The real estate investment management firm last month closed on the purchase of Gateway Corporate Center, a two-building office property near the intersection of the Orange (57) and Pomona (60) freeways in eastern Los Angeles County.
Terms of the deal weren’t immediately disclosed. Industry sources not involved in the deal estimated that the offices, which total 162,339 square feet, went for more than $40 million.
Hartford, Conn.-based Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers Inc. sold the property. It paid about $48.5 million, or $295 per square foot, for it in 2007, according to brokerage data.
The buildings were about 94% leased at the time of the sale, according to marketing material from the Irvine office of Cushman & Wakefield Inc., whose Jeff Cole and Ed Hernandez brokered the deal.
Cole calls the three-story buildings at Gateway Corporate Center, which was built in 2000, “the nicest property in Diamond Bar” due in large part to the campus’ stable tenant base.
Travelers Insurance, Wells Fargo Bank and Garmin International Inc. are the largest occupants at the property, where monthly rents average $2.52 per square foot.
The complex brings in about $2.9 million in annual rents, according to Cushman & Wakefield’s marketing materials.
The deal reflects Buchanan Street’s investment strategy in the Western U.S., where the company said it’s “actively buying core-plus and core office properties in opportunistic markets.”
Other regions where it’s recently been busy include Dallas and Scottsdale, Ariz.
The company spent more than $120 million to buy offices in each of those locations late last year. The deals, announced in November, included Tollway Plaza, a pair of eight-story offices in Dallas totaling about 370,000 square feet, and Paradise Valley Corporate Center, a 198,000-square-foot office building in Scottsdale.
Those two properties, like the Diamond Bar offices, were largely full at the time of the sales.
Buchanan Street has made three investments in the Greater Dallas area in the past year alone and now owns more than 1.3 million square feet of property in the Greater Phoenix area.
Much of the company’s recent Southern California deal making has taken place outside of OC. It paid more than $30 million last year for Waterside Center, a two-building office complex in Ontario.
Buchanan Street’s Diamond Bar purchase is the latest notable office sale in recent months involving OC investors in the greater San Gabriel Valley office market, an area of close to 20 million square feet.
Other local investors buying in the area include Irvine-based Greenlaw Partners and Stillwater Investment Group, which partnered on San Gabriel Valley deals in West Covina and San Dimas in the past year valued at nearly $53 million.
Diamond Bar is in the southeastern corner of the San Gabriel Valley.
“We anticipate the submarket will outpace the Greater Los Angeles market in both rent growth and vacancy rate over the next five years,” said Chris Herthel, senior vice president at Buchanan Street Partners, in a statement.
Los Al Sale
Revere Investments, a Rancho Palos Verdes-based apartment owner, has picked up a 150-unit rental complex in Los Alamitos.
The company paid $33.5 million, or about $223,000 per unit, for Rossmoor Manor, a 165,343-square-foot, garden-style complex at 11152 Wallingsford Road.
The seller was a Santa Monica-based entity operating as Given Benjamin Los Alamitos Investment Co., according to property records.
The deal was brokered by Christopher Arvizu and David Knowlton with the Irvine office of NAI Capital.
The two-story property was built in 1966 and sits on 3.9 acres. It has a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom units and was 99% occupied at the time of the sale, according to Knowlton.
Revere Investments’ website shows the company owning one other apartment complex in OC, Anaheim’s Calabria Villas, a 48-unit property it bought in 2012. It also owns about a dozen complexes in Los Angeles.
