Valley sale marks highest per-foot price in three years. (Real Estate).

IN the biggest San Fernando Valley sale so far this year, First Financial Plaza in Encino has been sold for $47.3 million.

The 217,500-square-foot office building, at the southeast corner of Ventura and Balboa boulevards, was bought by San Mateo-based REIT Glenborough Realty Trust. The building is fully leased, according to Torn Bohlinger, a senior vice president at CB Richard Ellis who brokered the transaction.

"It's generally recognized as the finest office building in the Encino market' said Bohlinger, who, with CB Richard Ellis' Sean Sullivan, Mark Perry and Madeline Schwartz, represented both buyer and seller, Cornerstone Suburban Office LP, on the deal. "(Leasing activity) has been very, very strong, even in this market."

As a result, rents in First Financial Plaza are in the $2.35 to $2.40 a foot range, well above the $2.16 average asking rent for Class-A space in the central Valley.

At $217 a foot, the sale price is the highest figure since Encino Executive Plaza, three blocks to the west, sold for $225 a foot in 1999, according to Bohlinger, and dwarfs the $131 a foot the nearby Encino Atrium sold for earlier this year.

The price also reflected the diverse tenancy -- the largest tenant, Pepperdine University, leases just 32,000 square feet and there are about 50 tenants in the building, limiting Glenborough's exposure to effects of a single tenant move-out.

The other big Valley deal in the works is the sale of the 2.9 million-square-foot Warner Center Properties' 21-building portfolio in Woodland Hills. A deal was struck in January for its sale to Robert Voit and Douglas Emmett Realty Advisors for an estimated $400 million, according to the Los Angeles Daily News. That deal has yet to close.

Staff reporter Danny King can be reached at [phone] ext. 230, or at [e-mail].