Mountain View office building sale incurs nearly $30M loss

WealthCap Management has sold a 56,000-square-foot office building in Downtown Mountain View for $36 million — nearly $30 million less than it paid nine years ago.

In what may be a sign of a wobbly Silicon Valley office market, an affiliate of the German-based WealthCap sold the three-story offices at 303 Bryant Street, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

The buyer was JPMorgan Chase of New York, which paid $643 per square foot in an all-cash deal.

WealthCap Management paid $65 million for the offices in 2014, or $1,161 per square foot. It took a 44.6 percent loss on the sale.

The vacant offices, at Bryant Street and West Dana streets, are in a prime stretch of Downtown Mountain View.

The building is deemed to be an attractive location as a headquarters site for a company, unidentified real estate experts told the Mercury News.

Since the onset of the coronavirus in early 2020, a growing number of offices have been vacated by companies during the era of remote work, although lately some employees have returned to their former desks.

The work-from-home trend has prompted more tenants to put their office spaces up for sublease, or to break their leases and walk away, according to the Mercury News.

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That, in turn, has eroded the value of some office buildings and forced some property owners to offer lease rates that are below the rental levels prior to the coronavirus pandemic.

Last month, JPMorgan acquired a 22-property California portfolio that it previously leased from MetLife for $138 million. The deal, first reported by The Real Deal, included 12 retail bank locations in Southern California and 10 in Northern California.

— Dana Bartholomew