Realtor.com is giving up half of its Santa Clara headquarters space to sublet to the self-driving trucking company Plus, The Real Deal has learned.
Plus secured 41,000 square feet, which encompasses the entire third floor of Clarion Partners’ four-story, 153,000-square-foot property at 3315 Scott Boulevard, earlier this month, according to two anonymous brokers with credible knowledge of the deal. Neither source, however, was directly involved in the transaction.
The company subleased the floor from Move Inc., a subsidiary of News Corp that operates Realtor.com. The agreement will expire at the end of 2025, which is the balance of Move’s term, the two sources said.
Plus has raised $520 million since it launched in 2016 and is headquartered in an 11,500-square-foot office at 20401 Stevens Creek Boulevard in Cupertino. It’s unclear what the company plans to do with this space moving forward.
It also occupies around 36,000 square feet of industrial property in Fremont, where it tests self-driving technology.
Representatives of Plus didn’t respond to requests for comment. However, Realtor.com spokesperson Stephanie Singer confirmed that Move subleased the third floor of 3315 Scott Boulevard, but didn’t disclose the subtenant’s name or any further details.
Many Realtor.com employees are now part of a hybrid-work model, so Move “made the business decision” to sublease about half of its corporate headquarters, Singer said.
Realtor.com will continue to occupy the building’s 40,000-square-foot second floor. The nine-year-old property’s other tenants are Edelman Financial Engines, which leases its top level, and Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise unit that occupies the ground floor.
This deal is the latest in a recent flurry of mid- to large-sized leases and subleases in Santa Clara. The city’s vacancy rate is the highest out of nine Silicon Valley office submarkets, at 28 percent, Newmark data show. Amazon, Nvidia and Applied Materials have all agreed to rent more than 500,000 square feet of the city’s offices so far this year.
Plus is also paying less in rent than if the company leased a floor in a building two minutes away with similar characteristics. That space, the second floor of 3355 Scott Boulevard, also owned by Clarion Partners, is asking $3.95 a square foot a month, while Move was asking $3.25 a square foot a month after it put its third-floor sublease on the market in December. A key difference between the two spaces is that 3355 Scott Boulevard is available directly from Clarion as a full-term lease.
Cresa’s Silicon Valley and Los Angeles teams represented Move in the sublease, while Newmark’s Derek Yep and Conor Boone represented Plus. Brokers from both sides declined to comment.
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