Uber’s Global HQ in San Francisco Nets $500M Refi

With an assist from the Golden State Warriors, Uber’s global headquarters just scored a $500 million refinance — a potential sign of a rebound for San Francisco’s office market. 

A joint venture involving the National Basketball Association franchise, Alexandria Real Estate Equities (ARE) and Uber Technologies secured a commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) loan for the 586,208-square-foot office development in San Francisco’s Mission Bay area.

Goldman Sachs (GS) and Barclays (BCS) originated the five-year, fixed-rate nonrecourse loan secured by 1655 Third Street and 1725 Third Street, two adjacent office properties 100 percent leased to Uber next to Chase Center, the Warriors’ home arena. Uber and the Warriors each have a 45 percent equity stake in a JV with Alexandria for the development of the two 11-story buildings, according to the San Francisco Business Journal, which first reported the CMBS deal.  

CBRE arranged the single-asset, single-borrower CMBS loan with a debt and structured finance team led by Brad Zampa and Mike Walker.

“The San Francisco office market is showing significantly stronger leasing fundamentals over the past few quarters and is experiencing a resurgence in investor activity,” Zampa said in a statement. “We’ve seen an increased amount of liquidity for both debt and equity in the office sector — particularly for high-quality, well-leased trophy assets such as the Uber headquarters.”

Office leasing in San Francisco last year was the highest since 2019 with a 20 percent uptick from 2023, according to CBRE. San Francisco was previously struggling the most of all large U.S. cities with office recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic due largely to increased crime and homelessness, as Commercial Observer previously reported.

Officials with Alexandria, Uber and the Warriors did not immediately return requests for comment. 

Andrew Coen can be reached at acoen@commercialobserver.com.