MOUNTAIN VIEW >> An office building real estate deal in downtown Mountain View with a price that’s below its prior purchase value hints at a wobbly office market amid widening layoffs in the tech sector.

An affiliate that’s linked to a unit of banking behemoth JPMorgan Chase has paid $36 million for an office building situated in a prime stretch of downtown Mountain View, according to documents filed on Feb. 15 at the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office.

The JPMorgan Chase unit bought the building in an all-cash deal, the county documents show.

The building totals about 56,000 square feet, according to a market brochure being circulated by CBRE commercial real estate brokers Vincent Scott, Mark Christierson and Todd Hulak, who have been attempting to find tenants for the building. The property is at the corner of Bryant Street and West Dana Street, one block from downtown Mountain View’s main thoroughfare, Castro Street.

The $36 million that J.P. Morgan Asset Management paid is considerably less than what the seller, an affiliate of Germany-based WealthCap Management, paid in 2014 for the office building at 303 Bryant Street.

At that time, the German asset manager paid about $65 million for the three-story building, county assessment documents show.

The building earlier this year was empty, the CBRE leasing brochure stated. CBRE was marketing the property as a “rare full-building opportunity” for a tenant that is seeking a “unique office headquarters,” the offering packet stated.

In the wake of the coronavirus, a growing number of office spaces have been vacated by companies whose employees were working from home more frequently — although current trends show that people are returning to their offices in greater numbers.

The work-from-home trend has prompted more tenants to put their office spaces up for sublease or to break their leases and exit the sites entirely.

That, in turn, has eroded the value of some office buildings and forced some property owners to offer lease rates that are below the rental levels prior to the coronavirus pandemic.