In an off-market transaction, the 165,905-square-foot tech office campus was purchased by Irvine-based Shopoff Realty Investments and Praelium Commercial Real Estate in a joint venture. The sellers were Montana Avenue Capital Partners (MAC) and Brasa Capital, which had acquired the property in a joint venture in late 2019 for $35 million. The sale price of approximately $61 million is the highest historically for a commercial property (excluding hotels) in the greater Santa Barbara market.
The three-building creative office campus on nearly 11 acres at 50-90 Castilian Dr serves as the HQ of AppFolio, Inc. (NASDAQ: APPF), a leading provider of cloud-based business software and services for the real estate and legal industries, which occupies the entire property under an 11-year lease. Built between 1997 and 2000, the buildings recently underwent an extensive renovation into a state-of-the-art creative office facility.
Representing the seller in the transaction were Francois DeJohn and Steve Hayes of Hayes Commercial Group in Santa Barbara, along with Sean Sullivan, Mike Longo, Todd Tydlaska, and Will Pike of CBRE in Los Angeles.
“Investors outside of our local market are taking notice of the very strong fundamentals for office and R&D assets in Goleta and the Santa Barbara area,” DeJohn said. “With UCSB being here, and the momentum of Google, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Amazon, and Raytheon operating in the area—to name a few—it’s a bona fide tech and engineering hot spot.”
For Montana Avenue Capital this followed their $44-million sale in July 2020 of 6303-6309 Carpinteria Ave in nearby Carpinteria, a 121,230 SF office property on 9.3 acres, which is Procore’s headquarters.
DeJohn and Hayes have completed 14 of the 20 highest value commercial sales on the South Coast since the beginning of 2019.