ANAHEIM, CA—Gateway One Lending & Finance, a leading company in the indirect auto-finance marketplace, has leased 50,000 square feet of office space at 160 N. Riverview Dr. here. The tenant signed a $5.5-million lease for the space.

Chris Migliori, EVP of Daum Commercial Real Estate Services, represented both the tenant and landlord Anaheim Hills Office Plaza LLC in the transaction. Gateway One has built relationships with dealers across 35 states and county.

Migliori tells GlobeSt.com that the building is a 75,000-square-foot, multi-tenant office building with two other tenants occupying the third floor. The property had been a bank REO that he had leased to 100% before it was sold to its current owner. Gateway One had signed a lease for the first floor four years ago and expanded its lease to include the second floor once the previous second-floor tenant, an executive-suite firm, vacated the space.

“This area is a pocket market of the Anaheim market,” Migliori says. “A lot of the executives live in Orange County, and many of the workers come from Riverside County, which makes this property conveniently located.”

As GlobeSt.com reported last week, the recovering Orange County office market appeared to lose momentum through the final quarter of 2013, according to a recent report from Studley. The firm says that regional hiring slowed and market dynamics became less fluid, creating a stagnant atmosphere for a market struggling to recoup its recession losses.

According to the report, which analyzed office-market conditions in the region, leasing volume declined to 7.1 million square feet in 2013—nearly 20% less than the long-term historical market average—from 9.1 million square feet in 2011 and 7.6 million square feet in 2012.

Users could take advantage of the slowed momentum in a number of ways. According to Royce Sharf, EVP and branch manager of Studley's Orange County office, “While leasing velocity has slowed significantly, tenants seeking large, contiguous blocks of space are finding options limited, particularly in select submarkets such as Newport Center and Irvine Spectrum. As a result, an increasing percentage of major tenants are opting for renewals, although a build-to-suit or preemptive strike to backfill a 'to be vacated' property in a proposed development could be a rewarding opportunity for the right user.”