Boston Properties said to enter L.A. market
It’s been rumored for years that Boston Properties, one of the largest landlords in New York City, was shopping for its first Los Angeles acquisition. Now it appears the company has found just the trophy property it was looking for in sunny Santa Monica.
Boston is in contract to buy Blackstone Group’s 50 percent stake in the six-building Colorado Center office complex for more than $500 million, according to sources with knowledge of the deal. It is the priciest single-property commercial sale to go down in L.A. County this year. The company is shelling out more than $900 a square foot for Blackstone’s half of the 1.1-million-square-foot campus at 2401-2501 Colorado Boulevard and 2400-2500 Broadway. The other half belongs to financial giant TIAA. Blackstone purchased its stake in Colorado Center from Equity Office as part of a $39.2 billion portfolio sale in 2007.
Sources told The Real Deal that Boston will manage and lease the property, which is roughly 75 percent occupied by tenants that include coveted tech company Hulu and Edmunds, according to CoStar. One of the buildings in the complex is vacant.
Average asking rent at the Center is $48 a square foot a year, or $4 a square foot a month, according to CoStar. New leases are likely to bring rates higher than that average, which is below the going rate in Silicon Beach.
Boston’s Properties already has property in California, most notably the under-construction Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, which will be the second-tallest building on the West Coast.
L.A. real estate bigwigs are ‘with her’
Hillary Clinton
The Los Angeles real estate community is stumping for Hillary Clinton. The former secretary of state is far and away the most popular presidential candidate among L.A.’s biggest political real estate donors, according to TRD’s review of campaign donations. In fact, only a relative handful of the real estate community has opened its wallets for billionaire developer-turned-politician Donald Trump .
Some of Clinton’s most high-profile Los Angeles donors include Beny Alagem, the Israeli American entrepreneur who owns the Beverly Hilton and Waldorf Astoria hotel in Beverly Hills; William Witte, the chairman and CEO of Related California; Karney Management CEO Aliza Guren; creative office space developer Robert Herscu; downtown L.A. developer Tom Gilmore; and Jeff Hyland, co-founder of luxe brokerage Hilton & Hyland, campaign records show. Most gave $2,700, the maximum donation amount permitted by law.
By comparison, her democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders, received few donations from the L.A. real estate community beyond a few donations from real estate brokers at Keller Williams, Coldwell Banker and Sotheby’s.
Meanwhile, Trump has scored only a handful of big name real estate donors, including Greg Beck, a partner at L.A.-based Champion Real Estate.
City seeks to regulate Airbnb rentals
It may have taken longer than in other cities, but the Los Angeles City Planning Department is cracking down on Airbnb. It recently released a long-awaited draft of regulations for Airbnb and other rental platforms, calling for a 90-day limit on the length of time hosts can rent out their rooms and steep fines for those found to be breaking the rules. It also would require that Airbnb turn over data on its users.
Unsurprisingly, Airbnb took issue with the proposals, saying the data requirement would constitute an invasion of its customers’ privacy. “[It] takes a step backward, putting consumer privacy at great risk by requiring online platforms to give the government unfettered access to confidential user data without any idea of how that information would be used,” said an Airbnb spokesperson in a statement.
The measure would prohibit hosts from renting out their secondary residences. Apartments that fall under designated affordable housing would also be prohibited entirely. Hosts would be taxed under hotel standards and would also be required to register their properties and display their registration number in online listings. Failure to follow these rules would result in thousands of dollars in fines.