Cress Capital snaps up five-building package at Cerritos Towne Centre

Cress Capital, a Newport Beach-based private equity firm, has purchased a portfolio of five office buildings totaling nearly 462,000 square feet at Cerritos Towne Centre for $89.5 million from Principal Real Estate Investors, a Des Moines, Iowa-based limited liability company.

A commercial real estate investment company that’s acquired nearly $100 million in Colorado assets in the last 12 months now owns Orchard Pointe, a prominent Class A office building in the Denver Tech Center.

Cress Capital has acquired Union Tower, a 210,000-square-foot office building in Lakewood, Colo., a suburb of Denver, for $25.2 million. TA Realty sold the property in an off-market deal.

Outside institutional investors have poured hundreds of millions of dollars into commercial properties in the Boulder Valley and Northern Colorado because they see a market with prices that leave room for profits, either as a landlord or through a quick flip. In the past 18 months, Goldman Sachs, Blackstone Group, Balfour Capital Management, Cress Capital and Crescent Real Estate, all deep-pocket investment groups based elsewhere, have acquired major portfolios in the region.

Orange County’s public company ranks will gain another member with the recent headquarters move of Ducommun Inc., Los Angeles’ oldest company.

Buying right is about seeing what others don’t and being unafraid to be a contrarian; using relationships to capture off-market deal flow and capitalize on the still-inefficient nature of real estate.