New Irvine high-rise HQ for Reza Jahangiri’s AAG

Reverse Mortgage Leader Using Hybrid Model

American Advisors Group (AAG) is bullish on the hybrid workforce model.

The country’s largest reverse mortgage lender has consolidated and relocated its Orange headquarters to the Irvine Towers highrise office complex near John Wayne Airport while simultaneously growing its employee headcount, a move that comes as local employers rethink their space needs in the wake of the pandemic.

“After moving most of our workforce remote in 2020, we found that many of our employees preferred the flexibility of working from home or the office, based on the needs of their job,” said AAG Chief Executive Officer Reza Jahangiri. “We began reimagining our workforce, post-pandemic, based on a hybrid model.”

AAG now counts some 90,000 square feet at Irvine Towers, a multi-tower office complex on Von Karman Avenue in the Irvine Business Complex and owned by the Irvine Co.

Consolidation

AAG has been a tenant at Irvine Towers since 2018 when it moved its sales and marketing departments to the 18200 Von Karman Ave. building.

The firm’s headquarters had been based out of the 3800 W. Chapman Avenue in Orange since 2011.

At one point, AAG occupied about 87,000 square feet in the 169,000-square-foot Orange office, which is now primarily occupied by the University of California Board of Regents, which bought the building at the end of 2020 for $45.1 million.

Around the same time of the sale, AAG started to transfer its Orange operations to Irvine, where it increased its footprint from 64,405 square feet to 87,898 square feet over four floors, including new offices in the 18100 and 18200 buildings.

AAG now occupies four floors in 18200 in addition to space in the 18100 building.

“Moving our headquarters to Irvine Towers, in the heart of Irvine’s ‘financial district,’ gives AAG greater access to Orange County’s talent pool, while maximizing the work-life benefits for our employees,” said Jahangiri, who in 2019 earned an Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award from the Business Journal. The company, founded in 2004, had more than $700 million in revenue last year, more than double its revenue total from a few years prior.

High vs. Low

AAG’s move is a rare sign of strength of late for the airport area’s collection of high-rise offices, which have appeared to be losing out to lower-rise counterparts in the wake of the pandemic, which has bolstered tenant demand for less-dense office buildings with outdoor connectivity.

Irvine Co. has noticed this increased demand for low- to mid-rise offices, with one of its tenants, Advantage Solutions Inc., recently relocating from its space at the Irvine Towers complex into a smaller building at its Lakeview Business Center elsewhere in the city.

Still, the landlord notes certain companies still choose the more traditional high-rise option, pointing to nearly full occupancy for its two newwest towers at 200 and 400 Spectrum Center, which opened a few years ago. ■