Broadcom buys its Irvine office building | Real Estate news

Computer chip and software program developer Broadcom bought the Irvine office compound it rented in the latest instance of a well-funded company taking benefit of depressed real estate costs to swap from renter to proprietor.

Broadcom paid its former landlord, PRP Real Assets, $325 million for the 660,000-square-foot research campus close to the junction of the 5 and 405 freeways in one of the biggest office gross sales in Southern California in current years.

The uncommon deal was a reacquisition for Broadcom, which developed the property as an office and research-and-development advanced before promoting the campus for roughly $443 million in 2017.

At that time, it agreed to lease it for 20 years, real estate data supplier CoStar said. PRP acquired the campus for $355 million in 2020.

The campus consists of two five-story office buildings at 15101 and 15191 Alton Parkway.

Completed in 2017 and 2018, the campus was designed to be Broadcom’s company headquarters with important research-and-development capabilities.

Broadcom, now based in Palo Alto, is one of the world’s largest semiconductor and infrastructure software program firms. It makes elements for iPhones, optical networking and other merchandise.

Through acquisitions of other tech companies, the company has assembled a portfolio of 17 owned properties totaling more than 2.2 million sq. toes, according to CoStar data.

“You rarely see an Orange County office deal of this size, and almost never from an occupier rather than an investor,” said Jesse Gundersheim, a senior director of market analytics for CoStar. “Broadcom is taking control of a campus that is already critical to its business.”

Companies occupying their own buildings accounted for 34% of Orange County office gross sales quantity over the past yr, in contrast with a five-year average of 24%, CoStar said.

In Los Angeles, fund supervisor Capital Group earlier this yr agreed to pay about $210 million for the 55-story Bank of America Plaza atop Bunker Hill, where it has places of work.

Others selecting to buy over rent embrace Riot Games and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

“We knew the best landlord we could possibly have would be ourselves,” Capital Group Chief Executive Mike Gitlin said in April.