BGL Expands SoCal Presence

By Ariela Moraru

12707 High Bluff Drive, San Diego

BGL Real Estate Partners, a division of Brown Gibbons Lang & Co., has opened an office in San Diego to better service the real estate market in Southern California. This is the company’s fifth office after Chicago, Cleveland, San Antonio and Philadelphia. Managing Director Christopher Stai will run the San Diego office and Joshua Rees has joined the team there as an associate in the national health care real estate group.

Joshua Rees

In his new role, Rees will focus on advising physician-owners, as well as public and private owners of health care real estate, on single-asset and portfolio dispositions, sale-leasebacks, debt-equity recapitalizations and tax-deferred strategies, such as 1031 exchanges and UPREITs. Rees joins from Knight Frank’s London office, where he specialized in the disposition of health care real estate assets, including medical office buildings, ambulatory surgery centers, short-stay hospitals, inpatient rehab facilities and other inpatient and outpatient facilities. Rees will also provide clients with the ability to leverage foreign investment demand and further broaden their investor base. San Diego was named the second most expensive medical office market after New York in the first quarter, according to a CBRE report, with one of the highest rent growths in the country since 2010 (9 percent), and a vacancy rate of 7.5 percent.

Located at 12707 High Bluff Drive, suite 200, the 4,841-square-foot San Diego office replaces the firm’s office in Irvine, Calif., which opened in 2014. CBRE handles leasing efforts for the Class A asset, which was built in 1986 and is owned by Equity Office Properties Trust. 

Image courtesy of BGL Real Estate Partners