Two New York debt investors, Axonic Capital and GreenBarn Investment Group, control the 33-story tower at 650 California St. without owning a square foot of it — a loan-to-own structure that keeps the old owner on the deed and sidesteps roughly $14 million in San Francisco transfer tax.

Columbia Property Trust still holds the deed to 650 California St. It no longer makes the decisions there.

Two New York firms — Axonic Capital and GreenBarn Investment Group — built a controlling interest in the 33-story tower's distressed debt, and when the borrower defaulted earlier this year, the default handed them the decision rights: they pushed the loan's maturity to 2028 and picked the operator now running the building, according to the SF Standard, which first reported the arrangement July 28. They did it without buying a single square foot.

That is the point. San Francisco taxes property sales of $25 million or more at 6%. Columbia — a REIT taken private by Pimco in 2021 and financed with a $1.7 billion loan syndicated by Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank — bought 650 California for $309 million in 2014; the building was valued at $236 million when Pimco took the company private. A sale at that price would trigger about $14.16 million in transfer tax. Buy the defaulted loan instead of the title, and there is no sale to tax. Axonic and GreenBarn purchased out those original lenders, putting them first in line for the upside after a renovation and eventual exit.

The default itself is documented: lenders served Columbia with a notice late in 2025, and the balance across the seven-property loan has grown past $1.9 billion, per The Real Deal and Bisnow. Axonic and GreenBarn declined or did not respond to the Standard's requests for comment.

This is a cleaner dodge than the deed-in-lieu deals reshaping downtown — 45 Fremont to Madison Capital, the Metreon to TMG — which at least transfer title and lean on the city's foreclosure exemption (Business & Tax Code §1108.2). Assessor-Recorder Joaquín Torres has flagged a surge in those claims, and a November ballot measure would repeal the exemption for commercial buildings. But that measure taxes foreclosure sales. At 650 California, no title moves at all — which is exactly why it may not reach it.