Southern California investor said to be in talks to acquire 255 California St.

LBA Realty may be inching closer to acquiring a second San Francisco office property in the city’s postpandemic era.

The Irvine-based investor is said to be in talks to acquire the 182,528-square-foot 255 California St. from seller Rockpoint for around $290 per square foot, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to speak about it publicly.

No deal has closed, but that pricing, if realized, could see 255 California trade in the low $50 million range, and would represent an approximately 66% discount to the $156.56 million, or $860 per square foot, for which Rockpoint acquired the building in June 2019.

Both LBA and Rockpoint declined requests for comment for this article.

If the sale to LBA does materialize, it would mark the firm’s second office acquisition in San Francisco in roughly the last eight months. In September 2023, the firm acquired 650 7th St., an 82,862-square-foot building in the city’s Showplace Square district, from Blackstone for $25.35 million. That price represented an approximately 50% discount from the $50.47 million Blackstone paid for the property in 2016.

Fire sale pricing like the kind LBA acquired 650 7th St. for has been luring a slow stream of investors back to San Francisco’s office market. Some prospective buyers are said to be in the market for multiple properties, if they can find the right deal — take Presidio Bay Ventures, which acquired the 157,000-square-foot 60 Spear St. for $260 per square foot in August of 2023. The firm, which is planning to remake 60 Spear as the country’s first “office resort,” has said its business plan for the building could be expanded out to three or four similarly positioned properties nearby to create a kind of urban campus.

So far, though, no one investor has emerged as a buyer for multiple investment-grade San Francisco office buildings in the postpandemic market; if LBA ultimately does acquire 255 California, it would be the first.

It was not clear Monday where talks between the firm and Rockpoint stood; Rockpoint had been seeking to offload 255 California alongside its lender, the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America, per the San Francisco Standard, which first reported the building had been placed up for sale. TIAA originated a $92 million loan for Rockpoint when it acquired the building in 2019; its parent company, Nuveen, did not respond to a request for comment Monday.