$28M sale lands as capital markets warm back up to OC offices

Key Points

• An MW Investment subsidiary purchased Fairway Center II in Brea for nearly $28 million from Nuveen, down from its 2016 purchase price of $33.8 million. 
• The 135,300-square-foot office building was 70.5 percent leased, with the Orange County government occupying over 61,000 square feet.
• The deal reflects ongoing Orange County office value adjustments alongside improving financing conditions.

Another Orange County office building has traded hands for less than its pre-pandemic sale value. 

The Whittier Comstock LLC, a subsidiary of Orange County-based MW Investment, purchased the Fairway Center II building at 675 Placentia Avenue in Brea for nearly $28 million, L.A. Business First reported. 

Nuveen offloaded the 135,300-square-foot property a decade after buying it in 2016 for $33.8 million. The deal did not include Fairway Center I, the adjacent office building owned by Dollinger Properties. 

The Fairway Center II building rises three stories and was 70.5 percent leased at the time of sale. The Orange County government leases nearly half of the property with more than 61,000 square feet occupied under a long-term lease. 

CBRE’s Anthony DeLorenzo, Sammy Cemo, Bryan Johnson and Jackson Marlow represented Nuveen in the transaction. Shaun Moothart and Andrew Post of CBRE’s Debt and Structured Finance arm secured the financing for MW Investment. The financing has an interest rate below 6 percent, which Moothard said “would not have been possible a year ago” as the capital markets environment has improved for office properties this year. 

Still, the Fairway Center building isn’t the only office property in Orange County that has not fully recovered to its pre-pandemic value. Over the summer, Lincoln Property Company sold Orange Center Tower, a 14-story, 282,000-square-foot office building at 500 North State College Boulevard in Orange for $63 million, The Real Deal reported at the time. Starwood sold the property to Lincoln in late 2017 for $92.5 million. 

The priciest office sale of the second quarter in Orange County was Shea Homes’ purchase of a 65,340-square-foot building at 601 Dover Drive in Newport Beach, which IRA Capital offloaded for a land value of $26.5 million, according to Kidder Mathews’ most recent report. Direct office vacancy in the county was 10.9 percent, down from 12 percent a year prior.