Office Building Sale Reflects Price Plunge : Real estate: Purchase is made at $32 a square foot, the lowest figure in years for comparable space.

A three-story office building in Santa Ana sold last week for just $32 a square foot, one of the lowest prices paid for premium office space in central Orange County in years.

HUIS (USA) Ltd., a construction and design company that is based in Hong Kong and has its U.S. headquarters in Pasadena, bought the 42,744-square-foot building at 230 Golden Circle Drive for $1.38 million from the Resolution Trust Corp., the federal agency charged with selling the assets of troubled thrifts.

Office-space rates “have hit the bottom,” said John Kiley, managing director of Sperry Van Ness in Newport Beach, who brokered the deal for the RTC. “You probably have to go back to 1985 to find this price.”

In early 1990, when the office-space market was much healthier, comparable space was as high as $180 a square foot, Kiley said. The vacant, concrete and steel-frame project was listed last year with an assessed value of $120 a square foot, he said. But with vacancy rates at 20% or greater, it’s a buyer’s market for buildings.

“This is the best deal I’ve had in three years,” said David Kuo, a broker for Huntington Realty in San Gabriel who represented HUIS (USA). “It’s a good property for them. Not every client has this chance.”

Construction on the Santa Ana and Costa Mesa freeways may have depressed the price because getting to the office building is inconvenient, Kuo said. His client also got an 8% discount from the RTC for paying cash in the transaction.

The building had been vacated by its major tenant, Woodward-Clyde Consultants, two years ago. Imperial Savings of San Diego, which financed the building, was seized by the Office of Thrift Supervision in 1990 and placed into the RTC’s conservatorship.

Sperry Van Ness placed the 11-year-old building on the market about three months ago at $39 a square foot. It got seven offers.

Comps Inc., a real estate information service based in San Diego, said it thinks that the price of $32 a square foot on which the buyer and seller finally settled was the lowest for top-of-the-line office space in central Orange County in at least a year. The highest price recently was for a three-story building in Newport Beach that sold for $230.38 a square foot in October, 1991.