Singaporean REIT Purchases 505 Brannan Street & 510 Townsend Street

Singapore’s Ascendas Real Estate Investment Trust, or Ascendas REIT, recently purchased two buildings in San Francisco for $572 million. Alexandria Real Estate Equities (ARE) and TMG Partners are on the other end of the move, parting with their partnered ownership of 505 Brannan Street and 510 Townsend Street in the SoMa neighborhood. This transaction follows the pair’s recent success in selling the 945 Market Street mall to Ikea. The deal marks Ascendas’ introduction to the Bay Area real estate market.

510 Townsend Street, image from Studios

The current tenant of 510 Townsend Street is Stripe, a financial services company focused on internet infrastructure. Their 85-foot headquarters was completed in 2018 by ARE. It yields 322,360 square feet, of which 288,370 square feet is for general office use and the remaining 33,990 square feet is for parking of 48 vehicles. The firm is planning to move to a larger office, so Ascendas might soon be looking for a new tenant.

Studios are responsible for the design. In describing their work, the firm writes that “to respond to the area’s differing scales and contexts, we stepped the building back and integrated design elements inspired by neighboring historic buildings, such as the brick façade, black mullions, and small glass window panes.”

505 Brannan Street 165-foot option, rendering courtesy Heller Manus Architects

505 Brannan Street is a 150,000 square foot development by TMG Partners and ARE, and is currently fully leased by Pinterest. The tech-firm has a lease through 2032, which they are expected to complete. Heller Manus Architects is responsible for the building’s design, including pre-built infrastructure, to allow for the future addition of a 165-foot addition. Just in case anyone is so inclined.

The foreign investment comes as a welcome move for the Bay Area real estate economy, for which connection to the rest of the world helps strengthen its international network. Ascendas REIT is a portfolio owned by Capitaland International, a public company owned by the Government of Singapore, a Southeast Asian city-state, through Temasek Holdings.

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