A Credit Bid Bought The Basis, And A Law Firm Just Validated It

O'Melveny & Myers LLP has signed a 15-year renewal on approximately 100,000 square feet — the top three floors of 1625 Eye Street NW, a 405,000 sf building in the Washington, D.C. central business district. The firm has occupied since 2003 and is the building's largest tenant.

Ownership — GreenBarn Investment Group and FarmView Ventures, with capital partner Farallon Capital — took the building at auction in July 2025 on a $60.5 million credit bid. That basis works out to $149.38 per square foot. O'Melveny holds 24.7% of the building's rentable area.

Distressed office basis has been easy to acquire and hard to prove. Buying a tower at a fraction of its prior debt is a transaction; demonstrating that the building can still command long-term credit tenancy at that basis is an operating result, and until it happens the basis is only a number on a closing statement.

This is the proof step. The tenant that could most easily have left — a law firm at a natural 23-year decision point, in a market with abundant alternatives — signed for fifteen more years instead, extending a 23-year tenure to roughly 2041 and a 38-year occupancy arc in one address.

The math underneath is unusually clean. Against a $149.38 per foot basis, the owner has enormous room on rent, concessions and capital before the deal stops working. Ownership is advancing what it describes as a comprehensive transformation of the property, and a 100,000 sf anchor locked through 2041 is what makes that capital financeable rather than speculative.

It also tells you something about how these auctions should be read. A $60.5 million credit bid on a 405,000 sf CBD asset looked, in July 2025, like a lender taking back a problem. Fourteen months later it looks like the acquisition of a tenancy that was never actually in question.

Brokers: Avison Young's Eli Barnes, Jonathan Wellborn, Will Stern, Lauryn Harris and Macy Parana for ownership; Jeff Welch of CBRE and Greg McCavera and Ella Adkins of JLL for the tenant.

Implications

For lenders still holding D.C. office paper, the relevant comparison is no longer the last trade but this lease — a credit tenant underwriting the building's next fifteen years at a basis roughly a fifth of replacement cost. Expect credit-bid basis to become the reference point for repositioning capital in the market, and expect the gap between basis buyers and legacy-basis owners to widen rather than converge.

Flags: rent per foot, tenant improvement allowance and free rent are not disclosed. Transformation capital cost is not disclosed. The 100,000 sf figure is described as approximate.