Fast-growing mortgage lender New American Funding has bought a creative-office campus down the street from its Tustin headquarters.
The privately held firm, which is reported to employ more than 800 people in Orange County, recently completed the purchase of Radius, a multitenant property at 14191 Myford Road near the intersection of Jamboree Road and the Santa Ana (5) Freeway.
The property, which is about 75% leased and located on 6.2 acres, sold for $22.5 million, or about $205 per square foot, according to CoStar Group Inc. records.
The nearly 110,000-square-foot building was sold by Irvine-based real estate investor and developer CapRock Partners, which paid a reported $14.8 million for it in 2014 and renovated part of the site in one of the area’s larger creative-office redevelopments.
“We are pleased that New American Funding recognized the value that CapRock created in re-positioning the property and creating unique outdoor amenity features,” CapRock President Jon Pharris told the Business Journal in a statement.
Property upgrades under CapRock included moving the main building entrance next to the parking lot, building a new lobby, and “upgrading the building’s aesthetic appeal with (an) extensive new glass line,” Pharris said.
The new owner won’t occupy the entire space. Tustin-based Avid Bioservices Inc., which operated as Peregrine Pharmaceutical Inc. until this month, has its headquarters next to Radius but leases 75% of the property for other parts of its local operations.
The biopharmaceutical company’s market value is about $175 million. It’s invested some $20 million on its facilities at Radius and recently expanded its presence there. Avid’s Radius lease extends through 2026, according to marketing material from the Newport Beach office of Newmark Knight Frank, whose Paul Jones, Kevin Shannon, Bret Hardy, Blake Bokosky and Scott Read marketed the property for CapRock.
New American will occupy the remaining vacant space of the two-story creative-office portion of the property.
The building is a few doors down from New American’s existing headquarters at 14511 Myford Road.
New American paid a reported $8.4 million in 2012 for that building, which measures about 83,000 square feet. It uses about half the structure for operations and leases out the remainder, according to CoStar records.
At the time of that purchase, New American was reported to do about $1.8 billion in lending business annually and employ about 100 loan officers. It’s much bigger now after capping what it called “a banner year” in 2017.
The company said in December that “when some lenders saw contraction, New American Funding opened 31 branches and hired more than 1,000 new employees, including 330 outside loan officers.”
It said it now funds approximately $900 million in home loans per month, and grew its servicing portfolio to $22 billion by the end of 2017.
It reported about $515 million in revenue for the 12 months ended in June, a 60.5% increase over the same period two years earlier.
New American ranked No. 6 among OC’s fastest-growing large private companies last year, according to Business Journal data.
The company was formed in 2003 by Rick and Patty Arvielo, who still run it and headed up the affiliate that bought the Radius office property.
During the last recession and mortgage industry collapse, the company employed just a few dozen people.
It now has nearly 2,800 employees. It also has large operations in Tempe, Ariz., Plano, Texas, and Detroit.
