The Location
649 S Olive St sits in the South Park edge of Downtown Los Angeles, one block west of the 7th Street Metro Center station and a short walk from the Financial District core.
The Setup
The building is a 1922-vintage high-rise, 161,836 gross square feet on a 13,478 SF lot. The property was renovated in July 2022
The recorded buyer entity is "1922 XYZ LLC," which almost certainly references the year built and the buyers affiliation with his company XYZ.
What an Operator Sees
This deal got more interesting when I stopped looking at the hotel and started looking at the buyer.
Daniel Negari has quietly been putting together a significant Los Angeles real estate portfolio. The acquisitions I found span hotels, office buildings, retail and commercial properties, with roughly $358 million of documented purchases.
Different asset classes. Different neighborhoods. But I see a common thread: he appears willing to buy good Los Angeles real estate when other buyers are uncomfortable with it.
The Downtown hotel is another example. $34 million for 241 rooms, about $141,000 per key. I don't know his underwriting or business plan, but that's a basis that immediately gets my attention.
What interests me even more is that he isn't making one big bet on one property type. He's accumulated assets across Los Angeles and appears willing to wait for the value of the underlying real estate to play out.
After meeting today with an investor who has been buying real estate for 54 years, and then looking more closely at Negari's acquisitions, I came away with one conclusion: when the time comes for my next acquisition, I'll be looking in West Los Angeles or Beverly Hills.
I'm becoming less interested in chasing yield and more interested in owning the right real estate at the right basis in locations I believe in for the next 10 or 20 years.
Negari's portfolio is a good reminder of that strategy: you don't necessarily need to predict what happens next. You need to buy well enough that you can afford to wait.
Know one other LA owner who'd want this deal? Forward this — reply with their email and I'll add them.
Property and transaction data: CoStar Research.