Oak Lane Partners nabs office building in its backyard for $20M

Oak Lane Partners paid $20 million for a two-story office building in Boca Raton, where the private investment firm is headquartered. 

An affiliate of Oak Lane, led by managing partner Chavin Shah, acquired the property at 791 Park of Commerce Boulevard in the Park at Broken Sound, records and Vizzda show. The buyer assumed a $15.2 million mortgage with Wilmington Trust.

The deal breaks down to $127 per square foot for the 156,918-square-foot building completed in 1994. 

The office building, known as 791 POC, sold for roughly $6 million below its previous sale price. In 2005, an affiliate of Birmingham, Michigan-based Commercial Finance Management, paid $26.1 million for the building on a 10-acre site, records show. 

Tenants include Wellness Plan of America, call center company Fusion BPO Services and medical device manufacturer KRS Global Biotechnology. Roughly 11,000 square feet is available at 791 POC at an asking rental rate of $21 a square foot, according to a Loopnet listing. 

The Boca Raton office submarket is keeping pace with the overall market in Palm Beach County, according to a recent Avison Young report. In Boca Raton, the vacancy rate hit 11.8 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, compared to 10.7 percent for the county overall. During the same period, the average asking rent in Boca Raton jumped to $43.18 a square foot, nearly 40 cents above the average asking rent for all of Palm Beach County, the report shows. 

Office trades in South Florida have tailed off since November as a result of higher borrowing costs for buyers. Investment sales volume dropped by 37 percent to $821.3 million in the third quarter of last year, compared to the same period in 2021, according to Vizzda. 

The Palm Beach office market ended 2022 with $299.7 million in investment sales volume, a decline of about $50 million compared to the previous year, according to Avison Young. 

Office deals also started out slow in January. Last month, Los Angeles-based Randall Realty Group paid $15 million for an office building in Palm Beach.