Office-campus operator TechSpace Inc. is the latest Orange County real estate company making a push into Austin, Texas.
The Aliso Viejo-based company, a landlord that offers flexible lease terms and ready-to-use technology for smaller businesses, recently announced plans to open a new location in the central business district of the Texas capital city, whose economy has been among the fastest-growing in the U.S. in the past few years.
TechSpace’s Austin location will run 28,000 square feet in a building owned by Orlando, Fla.-based Parkway Properties Inc. It will feature 24 private office suites and 250 workstations, along with a number of advanced technology offerings, as well as meeting and event space.
The Austin site is scheduled to open in January and will join seven existing TechSpace locations in New York City and California.
Those eight locations, including offices in Costa Mesa and Aliso Viejo, total about 280,000 square feet, and the existing offices are more than 95% leased, according to TechSpace Chief Executive Vic Memenas.
The company also has its eyes on a few additional cities for expansion, such as Seattle and some Sun Belt locations, he said.
Memenas describes the company’s business model as being “the Uber of office space.”
“It’s a great alternative to traditional commercial office space,” he said.
Typical TechSpace tenants employ 10 to 20 people, and many have lease terms that run as short as six months.
TechSpace adds to a lengthy list of expanding OC real estate companies looking to take advantage of Austin’s hot economy of late.
Others buying properties in and around that city since last year include Buchanan Street Partners, MIG Real Estate LLC and KBS Realty Inc., all of which are in Newport Beach, and Steadfast Cos. in Irvine.
TechSpace’s chairman is James “Watty” Watson, who runs Aliso Viejo-based developer and investor CT Realty Investors Inc., which has its own mega project in the works a few hours’ drive from Austin.
CT Realty is part of a venture—which also includes Seal Beach-based Xebec Realty Partners—that’s developing Southport Logistics Park, a $500 million industrial project about 12 miles south of downtown Dallas.
Cadigan Buy
Patrick Cadigan, one of the area’s largest private real estate investors, has added another sizeable apartment complex to his portfolio.
A trust run by the Corona del Mar resident completed the purchase of Eaves Los Alisos this month. The 140-unit rental complex in Lake Forest is a little more than a mile east of the San Diego (I-5) Freeway.
The 15-building property, located at 23251 Los Alisos Blvd., sold for $39.5 million, or about $282,000 per unit. The buyer got a $24.5 million loan from JPMorgan Chase Bank to fund the deal, according to CoStar records.
A partnership headed up by Arlington, Va.-based AvalonBay Communities Inc. sold the property, which it acquired in 2010 for a reported $24.7 million.
The complex features one- and two-bedroom floor plans averaging 903 square feet, with a total of 126,480 square feet. It was nearly 98% full, with monthly rents averaging $1,530 as of last December, according to AvalonBay’s latest annual report.
Cadigan’s investment portfolio now totals 13 Orange County apartment properties, with 2,070 units.
CBRE brokers Ray Eldridge, Bob Patterson and Michelle Jefcoat represented the seller. The buyer was represented by Carl Greenwood and Jim McKenzie of Greenwood & McKenzie.
