Despite concerns in the marketplace caused by Covid-19, some companies are still buying commercial real estate.
Brentwood-based Rexford Industrial Realty Inc. purchased a fully leased industrial property in Azusa in April for $15.5 million using cash on hand
It was a sale-leaseback deal, a transaction in which the seller leases back the property at the time of the sale.
These deals can be beneficial to both buyers and sellers. Buyers get income without having to search for tenants and make immediate improvements. Sellers can use the money from the sale of the building for other parts of their businesses.
Rexford Industrial Co-Chief Executives Howard Schwimmer and Michael Frankel in a statement called the acquisition “indicative of our commitment to deliver substantially above-market cash yields by investing within infill Southern California, the nation’s largest, highest-demand and most supply-constrained industrial market.”
The site is at 720-750 N. Vernon Ave. in the San Gabriel Valley submarket of Azusa. It has nearly 72,000 square feet of buildings on more than 6 acres.
“Vernon Avenue is a well located, fully occupied industrial property with a long-term, in-place, triple-net lease, providing a favorable level of recurring cash flow plus the potential for future value-add redevelopment given the relatively low implied value of the underlying land,” Schwimmer and Frankel said. “Looking forward, we believe Rexford is well-positioned with a fortress-like, low-leverage balance sheet to capitalize upon emerging internal and external growth opportunities in order to create value for shareholders.”
The industrial market in Southern California has been in high demand.
In the first quarter of the year, more than 2 million square feet of industrial space sold or leased in the San Gabriel Valley, up slightly from the same time period in the previous year, according to data from Jones Lang LaSalle Inc.
The full extent of Covid-19’s impact on commercial real estate is unknown at this time, but industrial is expected to be one of the stronger asset types right now, industry executives say.
A recent CBRE Group Inc. statement predicted that industrial and logistics properties will recover in 12 months while categories like retail assets may take up to 30 months to fully rebound.
