Washington Holdings Snaps Up RioTech R&D Park

A $113 million loan was recently obtained for the acquisition of RioTech R&D Park, a class-A R&D campus in San Jose. The property is centrally located in the North San Jose submarket with access to mass transit and key freeways.

The seven class-A R&D buildings totaling 377,776 square feet have been fully renovated in the last five years and are currently 79 percent leased with a weighted average lease term of nearly six years.

The sponsor was Seattle-based real estate investment firm Washington Holdings. The San Francisco-based CBRE team led by Brad Zampa and Mike Walker arranged the five-year interest-only financing from an international bank on behalf of Washington Holdings.

“The depth and breadth of liquidity for larger core plus office/R&D assets in technology hubs is impressive,” said Zampa. “Life companies, international and domestic banks, CMBS lenders and debt funds are all competing for well-located, high quality leased assets with best-in-class sponsorship. RioTech checked all the boxes.”

The Silicon Valley R&D market, comprised of more than 145 million square-feet, is consistently one of the nation’s best-performing markets. Driven largely by the exponential growth of the technology industry in the last decade, R&D has steadily increased in both occupancy and rental rates. The R&D vacancy rate at the end of the second quarter of 2021 was 10.1 percent, and the overall average asking rate was $2.72 per-square-foot per month on a triple-net basis.