LendingClub Buys SF Building for New HQ
Pre-pandemic, the office tower was valued at six times its current purchase price.
Financial services company LendingClub Corp. has inked a deal to acquire the 233,887-square-foot 88 Kearny St. in downtown San Francisco for $74.5 million. The company, which is the parent of LendingClub Bank, will occupy part of the building for use as its headquarters in about a year .
LendingClub funded the purchase entirely itself, and, in a news release announcing the sale, said the purchase price is economically comparable to leasing space in the market. The deal also has potential upside, provided leasing and property values recover in the Bay Area.
TIAA was the seller, having acquired the 1980s-vintage building in 1999 for $65.7 million, according to an article by The RealDeal. Blackstone bought a 49.6 percent stake in the asset for $230 million in 2019.
The bank plans to occupy 100,000 square feet of the property starting after the expiration of its current lease at 595 Market St., also in downtown San Francisco. The remaining space will be leased to other new or existing tenants.
The expiration of the company’s lease coincided with low San Francisco commercial real estate pricing, allowing the acquisition at a fraction of pre-pandemic cost.
Other deep-pocket financial firms are eying the bargains to be had in SanFran. In February, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Uber Technologies and the Golden State Warriors basketball team secured a $500 million refinancing loan for two office buildings in San Francisco that are headquarters for Uber.
San Francisco office claws its way back
The San Francisco office market, which was battered by the pandemic and other forces in recent years, is regaining some of its strength. JLL reports that leasing activity continued an upward trend in the first quarter of 2025, turning in the highest first quarter leasing volume in over five years at 2.2 million square feet.
Even so, the first quarter saw negative absorption of nearly 1 million square feet as companies consolidated their space in the city or left San Francisco altogether. The city’s availability rate is still hovering at 37.7 percent over the past year, according to JLL data. Sublease inventory dropped almost 1 million square feet in Q1 2025, mainly due to expiring leases.
Demand will probably be uneven this year, JLL predicts, but there are glimmers of hope for the market. San Francisco’s startup ecosystem is strong, having received more than $10 billion in funding for the first quarter while leasing 400,000 square feet.
You must be logged in to post a comment.