StarPoint sells Santa Monica dirt for $65M

StarPoint Properties has sold the ground underneath an office building on Santa Monica’s Ocean Avenue.

The $65 million sale was for the dirt at 1733 Ocean Avenue, where Terra Capital leases the land and owns the 100,000-square-foot office building on the property. The buyer of the land is an institutional private equity group, but Beverly Hills-based StarPoint would not identify the party.

The property is 0.79 acres, or around 34,200 square feet. The Los Angeles Business Journal first reported the sale.

StarPoint, led by Paul Daneshrad, owns multifamily, retail and office properties on the West Coast. Last year, the firm bought a 100,000-square-foot office building in Beverly Hills for $200 million.

Commercial space in Santa Monica commands higher rents than any other Los Angeles submarket, driven by the city’s strong tech sector. Major tech companies including Facebook and Google have offices there.

Average rent in the city is $63.18 per square foot as of the fourth quarter 2018, according to Savills Studley. The average of Westside markets together is $56.07 per square foot.

Ocean Avenue is one of Santa Monica’s busiest streets. Frank Gehry is designing a new project there. The StarPoint property is located a few blocks from the Santa Monica Pier and the Metro’s Downtown Santa Monica Station, which the Expo Line serves.