Citing its central location between Los Angeles and Orange counties, Newport Beach-based Cress Capital has acquired a portfolio of five Class-A office buildings totaling nearly 462K SF in Cerritos for $89.5M.

Cress purchased the property from Principal Real Estate Investors. Cress represented itself. Eastdil Secured’s Adam Edwards and K.C. Scheipe represented the seller.

“If you throw a dart on a map of LA and OC you’d land right here in Cerritos,” Cress Managing Partner Ryan Parkin said. “Within 10 miles, you have 3 million people. You are sandwiched in between LA and OC and can service both counties.”

The five office properties are part of the 125-acre Cerritos Towne Center, a master-planned mixed-use campus that has hotels, office, retail and entertainment offerings.

The buildings have 45 tenants and are about 88% occupied, Parkin said. The portfolio has three two-story and two seven-story buildings. Cress does not plan on any capital renovations for now.

Parkin said Cerritos is an underappreciated submarket in Los Angeles.

About 20 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, Cerritos has a little more than 50,000 residents and several commercial anchors — a performing arts center, an auto center, hotels, two colleges and a mall — that attract crowds of people daily, he said.

The property could draw in companies and workers from Long Beach, Whittier, Buena Park, Fullerton and Anaheim.

Though many companies look to buy office properties in downtown Los Angeles or the John Wayne Airport submarket in Orange County, Parkin said Cerritos provided a better opportunity for his company's strategy. The city’s central location along the border of Los Angeles and Orange counties is the biggest draw as well as its lack of Class-A office competition, he said.

“We’d rather be here where you are not competing with as many buildings as if you were in downtown LA or next to the John Wayne Airport,” he said. “We are right off several major freeways. We are right next to the ports of Long Beach. There is not a lot of Class-A office buildings in the area that offer the amount of amenities these offices have. This project does not have much competition.”