BH Properties Buys Orange County Office Campus

Freeway Corporate Park. Image courtesy of BH Properties

BH Properties has acquired Freeway Corporate Park, a two-building office campus in Santa Ana, Calif. TA Realty sold the 128,266-square-foot property for $21 million.

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According to CommercialEdge data, TA Realty bought the Class B property in 2015 for $24 million.

Freeway Corporate Park occupies more than 6 acres at 2501 Pullman St. and 1700 E. Carnegie Ave. Completed in 1987, the two-story buildings are connected by a skywalk and were renovated in 2002. Improvements included the activation of common area patios, as well as upgrades to the HVAC system, among others.

The office campus is less than 2 miles from Tustin Legacy within the Irvine Business Complex, a section of the Airport Area submarket. The property is roughly 1 mile from another Class B office campus that has recently landed an $82.5 million refinancing loan.

Newmark arranged the deal on behalf of the seller, while Colliers represented the buyer.

The Newmark team representing TA Realty included Co-Head of U.S. Capital Markets Kevin Shannon and Senior Associate Brandon White, as well as Executive Managing Directors Paul Jones and Brunson Howard. Colliers Executive Vice President Bob Caudill negotiated the deal on behalf of BH Properties.

Re-energized leasing activity

The property was 56 percent leased at the time of sale, having Iteris and Orange County Head Start on the tenant roster. In a prepared statement, Jones said that the new owner will capitalize on the metro’s re-energized leasing activity for low-rise office assets.

The average vacancy rate for Orange County Class B office properties stood at 13.5 percent in the first quarter of 2021, according to a recent JLL report, marking an uptick of 50 basis points from the previous quarter.  

Orange County office investments

Since the beginning of the year, five office properties totaling some 552,000 square feet have changed hands in Orange County for an aggregate $121.5 million, CommercialEdge data shows. Two of the five deals closed in the Irvine Business Complex.

In one of the larger transactions, Harbor Associates and Singerman Real Estate paid $92 million to acquire the Summit IV office campus in Aliso Viejo, Calif., in March. The Class A property had previously traded in 2015 for $108.1 million.