Half of all office buyers in the last year got pretty good deals. 

Fifty percent of Los Angeles metro office sales in the 12 months between the second quarter of 2025 and Q2 2026 were at a loss as distress works its way through the market.

“We're still at a stage where a lot of your sales are lender-driven, so it's not surprising that half [of office sales] are at a loss,” Newmark co-Head of Capital Markets Kevin Shannon said. “If your seller is a lender, it's almost always a loss, right? Even if you're not a lender, there's a good chance you're selling at a loss and just trying to recoup as much capital as you can.” 

Many high-profile sales in the last year have been lender-driven. 

The sale of Bank of America Plaza earlier this year happened after the seller, a Brookfield Properties entity, defaulted on a $400M CMBS loan secured by the property. That sale, at $210M, worked out to about $150 per SF. The property had been appraised at $212.5M in late 2024 but 10 years prior was valued at $605M. 

Brookfield also sold 333 S. Grand Ave., known as the Wells Fargo Center North, to The 601W Cos. The property’s sale price was not announced, but a Colliers office report from the second quarter lists the sale price as $150M, or $107 per SF for the 1.4M SF tower. That property was sold out of foreclosure, as Brookfield had more than $500M in debt on the property in maturity default. 

In late August, DivcoWest sold a 24-story, 542K SF Glendale office building for $70M, less than half of what it paid in 2017. The sale price works out to roughly $129 per SF. Though not publicly a lender-driven sale, the property secured a $145M floating-rate loan slated to mature in early 2027. 

These larger buildings seem to be suffering the most of all office types. Colliers’ data also shows that larger buildings are on the losing side more frequently, Colliers Regional Research Director for the West Region Michael Soto said in an email. Among the 24 buildings over 100K SF that the brokerage counted as trading hands in the last 12 months, 79.2% sold at a loss. 

But on the flip side of the half of sales that incurred a loss are those that sold for a profit. These tended to be lower-rise properties in affluent Westside areas.

In late 2025, Hudson Pacific Properties sold Element LA, a West LA office complex, to the tenant that had long occupied it: Riot Games. The $150M transaction for the building translated to $528 per SF. Riot Games paid an additional $81M to break its lease. 

Also around the end of last year in Beverly Hills, yoga apparel company Alo Yoga bought the 89K SF La Peer building at 8942 Wilshire Blvd. for $90M, or more than $1,000 per SF. 

The 50% of sales that occurred at a loss in Los Angeles is on par with the national average in the same 12-month period ending in Q2 2026. 

Markets like San Francisco and New York City have seen improvements in vacancy and rent, but many building sales are still posting substantial losses. Sixty-one percent and 49% of office sales occurred at a loss in those cities, respectively.

But Los Angeles is definitely lagging other cities, which have a greater volume and velocity of deals, Shannon said. The discrepancy is largely due to Los Angeles’ economic engines sputtering when others are full steam ahead. 

“San Francisco's got the AI engine, and it’s exploding,” Shannon said. “In New York, the financial services sector has been booming.” 

The entertainment industry, long a huge driver of office occupancy through tech and media companies, has slowed considerably in terms of space needs. Unlike other top metros, one single industry hasn’t emerged to lift all boats. 

“We don't have that engine,” Shannon added.