Capital Group buys Bunker Hill skyscraper | Real Estate news

Los Angeles fund supervisor Capital Group has accomplished its $210-million buy of the Bunker Hill skyscraper it already occupied as a renter and vows to continue increasing its downtown presence.

Capital Group was an anchor tenant at Bank of America Plaza, which it is going to now operate as a landlord. The 55-story tower at 333 S. Hope St. was accomplished in 1974 and has long ranked as one downtown’s most distinguished workplace addresses. Capital Group has been headquartered there since 1978.

The transfer to buy the building at a substantial low cost to its earlier worth is an element of a sample of well-heeled tenants deciding to change into house owners instead of renters in latest years as workplace property values plunged due to the pandemic and a shift to distant work for many corporations.

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

Bank of America Plaza’s earlier proprietor, Brookfield Properties, defaulted on a $400 million loan and put the building on the market instead of dealing with foreclosures.

It was the most important workplace sale in Los Angeles in 2026 and the most important in Los Angeles County since 2023, according to real estate brokerage Colliers, which marketed the property on behalf of the court-appointed receiver.

Potential consumers competing for Bank of America Plaza included both non-public and institutional traders from the U.S. and abroad, said Mark Schuessler, a broker at Colliers.

Capital Group has been headquartered in downtown Los Angeles since it was based in 1931, according to Chief Operating Officer Rob Klausner . “We view it as the ideal location to invest in as we bring our Los Angeles based teams together,” he said.

Capital Group is the most important occupant in the building, taking up 350,000 sq. toes on 14 flooring. It plans to steadily take over another 5 flooring as it consolidates staff from other workplaces downtown and in Santa Monica.

“The best way to ensure a great environment in downtown L.A. is to create what we’re calling a vertical campus” with 2,100 staff, Gitlin said. “It was just this unique opportunity where the price was much lower than it had been historically, and it was for sale.”

Bank of America is also a large tenant in the building and will continue to have its title on top. Other occupants embrace financial consulting firm Analysis Group Inc., law firm Musick Peeler & Garrett and Alliant Insurance Services.

Capital Group has more than 9,000 staff in 34 workplaces in a number of nations. It manages $3.4 trillion in property for hundreds of thousands of wealth management and institutional purchasers, a consultant said. 

Owner-users have surged as key gamers in L.A.’s workplace market, now accounting for practically half of all offers, according to real estate data supplier CoStar , while institutional traders’ share of purchases has fallen from 45% to 26%.

Office customers from the public sector are among the consumers. The metropolis of Los Angeles plans to buy a 35-story tower downtown for use by the Department of Water and Power.

Manulife U.S. Real Estate Investment Trust said in April that it could promote its high-rise at 865 S. Figueroa St. for $92.5 million pending approval from Los Angeles officers. It has an assessed worth of $248 million.

Another major public purchaser of a downtown workplace building was Los Angeles County, which in 2024 purchased Gas Co. Tower for $200 million, a steep drop from its $632-million valuation in 2020. County officers said at the time that the foreclosures sale was too good a deal to move up.

The county is steadily transferring staff into the 55-story skyscraper at the bottom of Bunker Hill that was widely thought-about one of town’s most fascinating workplace buildings when it was accomplished in 1991.