The owners behind San Francisco's Transamerica Pyramid are lining up plans to sell the iconic skyline fixture more than five years after they purchased the property, a period that included $1 billion worth of capital investments and a nearly complete boom-bust real estate cycle.
The joint venture between New York developer Michael Shvo's investment firm and Deutsche Finance America is in the final stages of negotiating a deal to sell the skyscraper and its surrounding complex to Yoda PLC, a Cyprus-based investment firm, according to people familiar with the pending agreement. The purchase price for the deal, which has yet to close and was reported earlier by Bloomberg News, has not yet been publicly disclosed.
The anticipated sale comes after the tower's current owners undertook a $400 million overhaul of the property, a capital improvement plan that has helped put the tower at the forefront of San Francisco's luxury office market and has commanded some of the highest rents in the nation, according to CoStar data.
The renovation transformed the building into a "world-class office destination," Shvo said in an emailed statement.
"I believed the Transamerica Pyramid deserved more than restoration — it required reinvention at the highest level," the developer said. "The Transamerica Pyramid has long symbolized the city's ambition and resilience."
The tower, built in the early 1970s, is the city's second-tallest structure behind Salesforce Tower. As of the end of last year, it had reached a leased rate of about 85%.
"We are proud to have strengthened that legacy — physically, financially, and culturally — and I am confident it will continue to define the skyline and serve generations to come under its next custodian," Shvo added.
New tenants, chapter
Once realized, the pending sale would mark the second time the Pyramid has been sold since its completion more than half a century ago. It would also help create a new benchmark for the city's office market as it claws back its pre-pandemic leasing momentum and valuations.
The selling venture acquired the high-rise in October 2020 as part of a $650 million portfolio deal that included the roughly 540,000-square-foot Transamerica Pyramid tower, the 191,142-square-foot office building at 505 Sansome St., a future development opportunity for an existing office building at 545 Sansome St. and an adjacent land parcel at 517 Washington St. Bayerische Versorgungskammer, a German pension fund known as BVK, helped finance the purchase.
Since the renovation work was completed in late 2024, the skyscraper has attracted a handful of high-profile leases emblematic of the tenant fight-to-quality shift rippling across the national office market.
Early last year, global law firm Morgan Lewis added its name to the Pyramid's tenant roster, signing a 123,000-square-foot lease spanning seven floors that will result in the firm relocating from its longtime San Francisco hub. The agreement, set to take effect in May, has so far been the largest deal the Shvo venture has landed since acquiring the property.
Other companies that have signed on for space in the Pyramid in recent years include investment firm Mizuho Financial Group, skincare brand Perricone MD, law firm BakerHostetler and financial manager Coatue Management, among a handful of others.
Larger buying pool
The city is still grappling with one of the highest office availability rates in the country, and its sales landscape remains riddled with deeply discounted deals. Yet strengthening leasing momentum — much of which has been fueled by the artificial intelligence boom — has caught the attention of larger institutional investors that largely wrote off San Francisco in the earlier years of the pandemic.
Sales volume in San Francisco more than doubled in 2025, according to CoStar data, a milestone generated by a broadening mix of buyers eager to plant a stake ahead of what many anticipate will be the city's next boom cycle.
AI startups' emphasis on in-person work has catapulted San Francisco's office market back to its position as a global tech capital.
While the city is still grappling with a vacancy rate of about 22%, a widening mix of fast-growing AI companies has been a critical source of demand, fueling an array of blockbuster deals and moving quickly to sign on for more space, in some cases within a matter of a couple of months.
That has created an attractive investment proposition for buyers, and Yoda is likely no exception.
The firm has a broad portfolio that includes a handful of luxury hotels and resorts in Greece and Cyprus, along with stakes in tech, shipping, energy, healthcare and companies across other business sectors. The Transamerica Pyramid deal, once closed, appears to be its first significant real estate move in the United States.