The parent company of Greenlight Financial Services, a mortgage company with sizeable operations in Orange County, has struck a deal to relocate much of its local employee base to Santa Ana in what looks to be a blockbuster office lease.
Nationstar Mortgage Holdings Inc., a Coppell, Texas-based lender that bought Greenlight in 2013, recently signed a deal for space at Pacific Center, a two-building office complex just off the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway on St. Andrew Place.
The lease for 1600 East St. Andrew Place runs close to 150,000 square feet and begins early next year, according to real estate sources.
It would be the largest new office lease in OC so far this year, not counting sales-leaseback transactions, according to CoStar Group Inc. records. Neither the tenant nor property owner had disclosed specifics on it as of last week.
Brokers with the local office of CBRE Group Inc. who are leasing space at Pacific Center declined to comment, citing a nondisclosure agreement.
Nationstar and its affiliated companies leased close to 127,000 square feet in Irvine as of the end of last year and an additional 25,000 square feet in Newport Beach, according to the company’s latest annual report.
The company acquired the origination platform and unfunded loan pipeline from Greenlight in 2013 for about $75 million.
Not all of Nationstar’s local operations will relocate to Santa Ana, at least not immediately, due in part to staggered leases it has at various area buildings, according to real estate sources.
2015 Sale
A venture between Costa Mesa-based investment and development company Brookhollow Group and longtime financial partner PCCP LLP, a Los Angeles-based investment management firm, acquired Pacific Center last year in a deal valued at about $43.9 million, according to brokerage data.
The property previously held the headquarters of Ingram Micro Inc., but at the time of the sale Orange County’s largest company by sales already had disclosed plans to relocate its offices to the Park Place campus in Irvine.
The new owners of the 392,877-square-foot complex have since been upgrading its interior and exterior, adding a number of tenant-friendly amenities.
The building with the Nationstar lease now has about 240,000 square feet of available space. CBRE’s Dave Desper, Ross Bourne, Rick Warner and Chip Warner have the listing for the property.
A large new lease would appear to solve one key space issue for Nationstar: parking.
The company’s local operations typically have fit more employees into its space than other tenants by square foot, sometimes leading to a shortage of parking spots. At Irvine Towers, one of its current locations, valets have been set up on the top levels of some of the Irvine Company-owned complex’s parking structures in order to ease parking congestion.
The mortgage company also has shuttled in employees from off-site parking lots to its local offices, according to real estate sources.
Nationstar could be leasing more space at Pacific Center than it now needs, in order to ensure it has enough parking at the new location, according to sources not directly involved in the Santa Ana deal.
Pacific Center has five parking spots per 1,000 square feet, according to CBRE marketing materials for the property.
The Greenlight name, despite the 2013 sale to Nationstar, remains atop the Irvine Towers office, although another name change appears to be in the works. Nationstar announced this year that it was rebranding its lending operations to “Mr. Cooper.”
