Less than a year after it acquired an office building near Farragut Square, Beacon Capital Partners has decided to sell it for a $1M loss.

The Boston-based real estate investment firm sold 1735 K St. NW for $15.5M to Bernstein Management Co., according to the D.C. recorder of deeds.

Beacon acquired the 97K SF, midblock property on Dec. 16 from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for $16.5M. At the time, the property served as FINRA's headquarters, but the regulator announced plans in October to move to 1700 K St., less than a block away.

Beacon Capital Partners and Bernstein Management Co. didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

The downtown D.C. office market has suffered from historically high vacancy rates, as once-reliable tenants like law firms shrink their footprints and move to new and freshly renovated buildings.

Nationwide, commercial property prices have dropped 13% from their peak earlier this year, Green Street reported this week. Those signs of distress are beginning to trickle through a largely frozen investment market.

On Oct. 24, Pembroke sold for $16M the 11-story office building at 1010 Vermont Ave., which it bought in 2008 for $22.4M, to Altus Realty, which plans to convert it into a residential property. Hines also agreed to hand over an office property atop the Metro Center station to its lender, signing a deed-in-lieu-of-foreclosure agreement for the 302K SF office in September.