SoFi office building heading to auction block

The Brandywine Corporate Center, home to online lender SoFi, is heading to auction in August. | PHOTO COURTESY OF NEWMARK/COSTAR

WILMINGTON – The Brandywine Corporate Center, a Class A office building that is home to major online lender SoFi, among other tenants, is heading to the auction block in August.

The auction, which will run online from Aug. 9 to 11, features a starting bid of $3.5 million.

Located off Naamans Road near an Interstate 95 interchange at the Pennsylvania border, the 30-year-old office building is currently fully occupied.

SoFi moved its operations to the 76,000-square-foot building in 2016 after acquiring Zenbanx, and reportedly has a lease that runs until September 2024. CD Diagnostics, a medical technology firm that was acquired by a larger firm several years ago, has been located there since 2013.

The property is currently owned by Woodside, a Texas-based, vertically integrated real estate investment fund manager that primarily acquires small balance commercial real estate and non-performing real estate loans.

Woodside acquired the property in a 2018 auction itself from CWCapital Asset Management, a Maryland-based real estate investment firm, for $5.75 million, according to county land records. Since then, it’s invested more than $2.2 million in capital expenditures and tenant improvements.

Newmark, one of the leading national commercial real estate brokerages, is handling the listing. Dave Dolan, senior managing director of Newmark’s Capital Markets Philadelphia group, told Delaware Business Times that the owner was looking to cash out of the investment to seek new opportunities.

The brokerage is seeing interest in the property, mostly from private investment firms rather than larger institutional firms, Dolan said.

He expects the fact that the Brandywine Corporate Center is fully leased for a few more years will help it fetch value on the auction block. Many larger office buildings are already contending with falling occupancy levels due to companies moving to remote working or hybrid home-office work schedules.

“The world’s still sorting out the workplace strategy for working from home versus working in the office. But that said, at 100% occupancy with good-credit tenant leases and great cash flow, this property is a very attractive investment for a number of people,” Dolan said.