New York Life Sells SoCal Office at 55% Discount
The company acquired the building in 2015 for $82.5M
By Nick Trombola January 23, 2025 2:05 pm
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New York Life Real Estate Investors has shed an office building in Southern California for less than half of what the company paid to acquire it nearly a decade ago.
The investment arm of New York Life Insurance sold the 11-story, 234,400-square-foot property at 18201 Von Karman Avenue in Irvine for $37 million, about 55 percent less than the $82.5 million it paid for the site in 2015, property records show. The buyer was Irvine-based investment firm Greenlaw Partners, per records.
JLL Capital Markets’ Michael Leggett, Will Poulsen, John Rankin and Tim Donald represented New York Life, and procured the buyer. Greenlaw is the owner and manager of three adjacent buildings, and its familiarity in the area helped it land the winning bid for 18201 Von Karman Avenue, Poulsen said in a statement. The property, renovated in 2016, is currently only 43 percent leased to tenants including Alliance Healthcare, biotechnology firm Revance, Center Street Lending and insurance company First Integrity.
“18201 Von Karman generated quite a bit of investor interest, ranging from institutional investors to private buyers along the West Coast, who saw the value-add potential of the highly amenitized asset,” Poulsen said in a statement.
A representative for Greenlaw did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Although total office leasing activity in Orange County exceeded 8.3 million square feet in 2024 — setting a new bar in the county for post-pandemic activity — volume still declined by 7.2 percent in the fourth quarter compared to the third, and is overall still below 2019 levels, according to to JLL’s latest quarterly market outlook. Total office vacancy hovered around 17.2 percent.
Quarterly office sales volume, meanwhile, increased dramatically in the county due to the first interest rate cut in two years. Investment deals shot up 77 percent in the fourth quarter, per JLL, but annual sales still didn’t reach $1 billion, and were only slightly higher than the sale total in 2010.
Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.
