Rockwood Capital and LPC West, the West Coast arm of Lincoln Property Co., sold the high-rise at 915 Wilshire Blvd. to German real estate investment company Deka Immobilien.
Newmark Group announced the sale Dec. 17. Newmark’s Kevin Shannon, Ken White, Rob Hannan and Laura Stumm represented the seller in the off-market deal.
“This is yet another example of foreign capital buying Class A office assets in gateway markets with credit and attractive lease terms,” Shannon said in a statement.
“The weighted average lease term on 915 Wilshire was over eight years, and the rent roll was anchored by a GSA 15-year lease for nearly a third of the property,” he added.
Newmark’s David Milestone led refinancing for the property.
The building, which offers more than 388,000 square feet of office space, recently underwent a renovation. It was 90% leased at the time of the sale to 30 tenants.
The building’s “above-average parking ratio compared to other DTLA office assets will be valuable post-pandemic as more employees will likely opt to drive downtown initially,” White said in a statement
Downtown has felt the impact of the pandemic more than some other markets.
During the third quarter, the area saw vacancies rise to 18.2%, up from 15.8% the previous year, according to data from Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.
The market had more than 300,000 square feet of negative net absorption in the quarter, according to JLL.
Newmark research, however, has found that downtown still has some selling points, such as transit and a large amount of multifamily housing under development.
It also has lower rents than the Westside. The average asking price for Class A office space in the third quarter was $3.85 a square foot in downtown, compared with $5.65 a square foot on the Westside, according to JLL data.
Some Westside cities have even higher asking rents.
In Santa Monica, for example, the asking rent for Class A office space in the third quarter was $6.64 a square foot, according to JLL.
The sale of 915 Wilshire isn’t the only transaction for a large office building in downtown this year.
This summer, the iconic U.S. Bank Tower sold for $430 million to New York-based Silverstein Properties Inc., which purchased the more than 70-story skyscraper from Singapore-based OUE Ltd.
It’s Silverstein’s first property in the area. The deal officially closed in September.
The price tag was significantly discounted from the $700 million price point that experts estimated it could fetch.
