SoMa Offices Trade to NY Life Partnership at Steep Discount

CBRE’s Capital Markets team in San Francisco arranged the sale of 410 Townsend St., a four-story, 78,000-square-foot office building in San Francisco’s South of Market (SoMa) submarket. The property was formerly a hub for early-stage tech startups such as Eventbrite and Zendesk.

New York Life Real Estate Investors (NYLREI) and Bridgeton, a vertically integrated real estate investment firm, purchased the property for $22 million. The sale price represented a substantial discount on the nearly $86 million that Clarion Partners paid in 2019, according to published reports. NYLREI and Bridgeton were represented by Mike Taquino and Kyle Kovac of CBRE.

Although CBRE didn’t identify the seller, the San Francisco Business Times reported that Nationwide Life and Annuity Insurance Company, once the building’s lender, took ownership of 410 Townsend after Clarion handed over the property last December. By that time, occupancy had declined to around 25%.

“It’s our opinion that this is the start of the recovery for the San Francisco real estate market and 410 Townsend provides us with the opportunity to acquire a best-in-class creative brick and beam office asset well below replacement cost and where the asset traded in 2013 and 2019,” said Albert Pura, senior director of transactions for NYLREI.

Leaders From Rialto Capital Management, AEW, CIM, Rexford Industrial, EQR and Cushman & Wakefield come together on the Capital Markets panel at Connect Los Angeles 2024 on May 1 at the InterContinental in DTLA. Register now to hear from these industry experts and more.