Apple Buys Cupertino Office Campus for 35% Discount

Unlike its tech brethren, who generally are shrinking their office footprints in the Bay Area, Apple continues to scoop up bargains as it expands its office holdings in proximity to its headquarters in Cupertino.

Apple’s latest acquisition is a four-story office building, located at 10200 South De Anza Boulevard—about two miles from the company’s world headquarters—that the company purchased for $70M, according to a report in the San Jose Mercury News.

The tech giant bought the 161K SF building from San Francisco-based investment firm Rubicon Point, which bought the property in 2019 for more than $107M, the report said.

In April, Apple announced in April plans to redevelop part of its headquarters campus at 19191 Vallco Parkway, an eight-acre tract where the company plans to demolish an existing 141K SF office building and replace it with a 282K SF building.

In January, Apple purchased a 20-acre, 10-building office campus adjacent to its Cupertino headquarters. The complex, known as the Apple Results Way Campus, is a 384K SF office and research campus located in an area of Cupertino known as Five Results Way. Apple had leased the 20-acre property since 2011.

In the Apple Results Way transaction, Apple was listed as the buyer and the seller, according to documents filed with the county. An unnamed corporate entity of Apple was named the designated successor of a new affiliate of Swift Real Estate Partners that had been created by Swift for one purpose: to own the properties that Apple just bought. The Swift Realty Partners affiliate purchased the 10-building campus in 2020 for $346M.

The maneuver with the title documents enabled the tech giant to legally avoid paying a transfer tax imposed by Santa Clara County when a property is purchased in transactions when the buyer and seller are two distinct entities.

In June 2022, In June, Apple signed a lease for a newly built office campus in Sunnyvale, CA, bringing the tech giant’s footprint in that city—about eight miles from the Cupertino HQ—to more than 800K SF. Apple’s leases in Sunnyvale secured both buildings of developer and owner Jay Paul Co.’s new Mathilda Commons office complex, which features two four-story Class A buildings encompassing 382,500 SF.

Apple occupies two other buildings in Sunnyvale, owned by Kilroy Realty and totaling about 425,000 SF, also on North Matilda Ave.

Last summer, Apple made its first property acquisition in San Diego, a $445M purchase of the 67.5-acre Rancho Vista Corporate Center, an eight-building complex encompassing 817K SF in the city’s Rancho Bernardo submarket.

Before the pandemic began, Apple committed to invest $430M in the US over the next five years, creating more than 20,000 jobs.