A new owner moves into San Francisco’s skyline

One of the most recognizable pieces of San Francisco’s skyline will soon have a new owner.

San Francisco-based real estate manager and developer DivcoWest has agreed to buy a significant stake in 101 California, the block-wide, 48-story column of steel and glass at the heart of the Financial District, according to a source close to the deal.

The transaction would move one of the city’s premiere pieces of commercial real estate in the most significant office trade in years.

The seller is the Hong Kong Monetary Fund, according to Green Street News. The HKMF has owned part of the tower since 2012, when it teamed up with the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund, GIC Private Limited, to purchase a 92 percent stake in the building.

The stark, 600-foot-tall cylinder contains more than 1.2 million square feet of office space, and hosts tenants such as Chime, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. The structure occupies a full block, bound north and south by California and Pine streets, with Davis and Front streets to east and west. Hines recently put $75 million into a ground-floor renovation that upgraded the outdoor plaza and added a cafe and lounge. That project, drawn up before the pandemic, was completed in 2023.

The property still carries a $755 million loan that comes due in 2029. As of September 2025, the building was 82 percent occupied, according to Morningstar Credit.

According to the source, the deal has not yet closed. It is unclear how much of the property DivcoWest has purchased. GIC owns the majority stake, and Texas–based developer Hines — who developed the property in 1982, and still manages the asset — owns a less than 10 percent stake.

DivcoWest manages more than 24 million square feet of real estate assets, worth about $18 billion, across the U.S. Its properties include 540 Madison Ave, a 39-story office tower in Manhattan, and 300 and 301 Howard St in San Francisco, a pair of buildings that contain more than 730,000 square feet of office space in the SOMA neighborhood. The company also holds property in cities such as Austin, Seattle, Los Angeles and Boston.

The 101 California tower hit the market late last year at $900 per square foot, giving the skyscraper a roughly $1.1 billion valuation, a price that was widely viewed as the best test to date of the appetite for prime property in San Francisco. The city struggled to rebound after the pandemic but has appeared to hit a vein of gold once again as the center of gravity for the artificial intelligence industry. San Francisco still carries a nearly 33 percent office vacancy rate, but demand has surged and 2025 marked the best office leasing year for the city since 2019, with 10.2 million square feet of leases signed, according to CBRE.

“We’re definitely off the bottom” of the market, Colin Yasukochi, head of CBRE’s tech arm, told The Real Deal. He called 101 California “one of the most prominent buildings” and that “any renewed investment or commitment to staking space in that building does make a mark.”

Still, even the $900 per square foot price proposed by the sellers of 101 California, falls below its 2018 valuation of more than $1.4 billion — nearly $1,200 per square foot.

Despite the rush for high-quality office space — almost 90% of San Francisco office leases in the fourth quarter of 2025 were in Class A buildings — major trades in the city’s trophy market have been minimal in San Francisco since the pandemic. One private equity executive told The Real Deal that, despite the AI boom, borrowing money remains tough for office investments.

“The opportunities in San Francisco are probably to get a piece of trophy space, like 101 California, or go buy a class B building and spend a ton of money to make it an attractive and competitive office space,” the executive said.