San Francisco’s office market was busy during the first quarter of 2017. Sales volume increased 109% year-over-year with average sales price per square foot reaching $769, a new record for the first quarter, according to CommercialCafé.The company tracks volume of sales worth more than $5M.
Sales volume reached $1.35B last quarter and was six times higher than the sales volume from Q1 2013. Volume did drop 23% compared to Q4 2016, but Q1 2017 was the second-best Q1 within the last four years.
Pricing continues to rise as San Francisco becomes increasingly popular among national and international investors, especially Asian investors. New York and Los Angeles were the only cities to surpass San Francisco’s number of trophy office sales. Compared to Los Angeles, San Francisco’s price/SF was three times higher.
During the quarter, there were eight office deals worth more than $5M for office buildings of more than 50K SF. The largest office deal was Blackstone’s $351M purchase of Charles Schwab’s San Francisco headquarters at 211 Main St., an 18-story 417K SF Class-A office building. CIM Group was the seller. Rockpoint also acquired 100 Pine St. from the Alaska Permanent Fund in February for $345M.
For the second quarter, three offices are expected to deliver, including the 372K SF office at 350 Bush St. Other projects to be completed are Longmarket Property Partners’ 92K SF office at 939 Ellis St. and a 51K SF office at 135 Townsend St.
