Broadcom now owns the ground it stands on in Irvine. The chipmaker closed a $325 million deal on September 4 to buy back its 660,893-square-foot corporate campus at 15101 and 15191 Alton Parkway, paying about $492 per square foot for the two five-story buildings it has occupied under a long-term lease.
The purchase price came in 8.5% below the $355 million that seller PRP Real Assets paid for the same campus back in August 2020, a deal that at the time set the all-time record for the highest-priced single office transaction in Orange County history, according to The Real Deal. That 2020 sale, worth $537 per square foot, had come from developer FivePoint Holdings, which built the campus fresh before selling it to PRP.
PRP Real Assets is a Washington, D.C.-based investment firm founded in 2005 by Paul C. Dougherty that has acquired or developed more than 17 million square feet of commercial property valued above $6 billion nationwide, according to PRP Real Assets. The firm specializes in single-tenant “mission-critical net lease” assets, and it had held the Irvine campus inside its Corporate Net Lease General Partner Fund since the original 17-year net lease was signed.
A Campus Built Specifically for Broadcom
The 9.6-acre site sits in the Spectrum Triangle near Interstates 5 and 405 and State Route 133, adjacent to City of Hope's hospital and cancer research center at FivePoint Gateway, per Capdex's reporting on the deal. Gensler designed the campus specifically for Broadcom, and it was completed in two phases across 2017 and 2018, with roughly 2,989 parking spaces serving the property.
The buildings split roughly 75% office and 25% research-and-development laboratory space, reflecting Broadcom's engineering-heavy footprint at the site. Broadcom currently subleases 21,464 square feet in the 15101 building to Omega Accounting Solutions, though whether the chipmaker will eventually reclaim that space as its Southern California operations expand remains an open question.
Deep Roots in Orange County
Broadcom was co-founded in 1991 by engineers Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas in Southern California, and the company was long headquartered in Irvine before shifting its executive base to Palo Alto, according to Forbes. Samueli remains a prominent local figure today as owner of the NHL's Anaheim Ducks. Broadcom is now headquartered in Palo Alto and maintains other offices in Culver City, San Diego, Petaluma and San Jose, per the seed report.
A Cooling Office Market Around One Bright Spot
The buyback comes as Orange County's broader office market keeps softening. Commercial leasing volume hit just 1,544,248 square feet in the second quarter of 2026, pushing year-to-date leasing to 3.39 million square feet — a 61.4% plunge compared to the 8.65 million square feet leased over the same stretch in 2025, according to Kidder Mathews. Direct office vacancy across the county stood at 10.9% in the second quarter, while Class A buildings carried a steeper 15.9% vacancy rate and a 21.9% overall availability rate, as Hoodline previously reported.
Other recent deals show just how far prices have fallen elsewhere in the county. Lincoln Property Company sold Orange Center Tower in the Platinum Triangle for $63 million, or $220 per square foot, in late June — a 31.9% loss compared to its 2017 purchase price, according to the same Hoodline market report. Against that backdrop, Broadcom's 8.5% discount looks modest, underscoring how specialized research-and-development campuses have held their value better than typical office towers.
Investors Still Chasing Irvine's Tech Assets
That resilience shows up elsewhere in the Irvine Spectrum submarket too. Chicago-based Kurv Industrial bought a 348,230-square-foot industrial and office facility at 9750 Irvine Boulevard in April, where electric truck maker Rivian is the primary tenant, a deal Hoodline covered at the time as a sign of continued institutional demand for the area's tech and flex campuses.
Broadcom's move also arrives against a backdrop of other major campus transitions in Southern California. Broadcom acquired the Stanford Research Park buildings in Palo Alto as part of its $69 billion VMware acquisition in 2024, and later sought to sell 13 buildings at that same research park, per the seed report. Separately in Orange County, Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian acquired the 89-acre Ziggurat office property at 24000 Avila Road in Laguna Niguel — formerly the Chet Holifield Federal Building campus — for $207 million, while MGR Real Estate paid $89 million to Granite Properties for offices at Orange City Square in Orange, and Shea Homes paid $26.5 million, or $406 per square foot, for a 65,340-square-foot building at 601 Dover Drive in Newport Beach, purchased from IRA Capital.
Taken together, the deals suggest Orange County's office market is bifurcating: general vacancy has actually eased slightly from 12% a year earlier to 10.9% now, even as steep discounts persist for older or less specialized towers. Broadcom's decision to buy rather than continue leasing its own purpose-built lab-and-office campus, with a lease that had been set to run through August 2037, signals confidence in holding onto a facility tailored to its research needs even as the wider market resets around it.
