Caverly: “The list of nine non-core
assets includes parking lots,
older industrial buildings and
land for residential development.”

(Save the date: RealShare Industrial 2012 comes to The Bankers Club, Miami, December 5 - 6.)

LOS ANGELES-Publicly owned Los Angeles-based real estate firm EVOQ Properties has sold nine of its non-core assets throughout Southern California this year. The dispositions were made in an effort to “refocus our efforts and reinvest in our properties with significant value-add potential in downtown Los Angeles,” according to Martin Caverly, the firm’s CEO.

Total gross proceeds from the sales were $55.4 million. A portion of the net proceeds was used to retire approximately $35.8 million of secured debt.

Sales included the Union Lofts building downtown, on which GlobeSt.com previously reported. That property was a 10-story building that sold to Onni Group of Vancouver, BC, for $34 million. The property contains 92 luxury apartment homes and a one-acre development site. The seller was represented in the transaction by Marc D. Renard, Manfred W. Schaub and Meredith L. Johnson of Cushman & Wakefield of California.

Other properties EVOQ has sold this year include the industrial L.A. properties 2415 Washington Blvd., 5707 South Alameda ST., 1000 East Cesar Chavez Blvd., 718 Jackson St. and 644 Gladys Ave.; a parking lot at 648 Stanford St. in L.A.; and two vacant land sites in Covina and Sylmar, CA.

Caverly tells GlobeSt.com that the buyers for each of these properties are local individuals, most of whom are owner/users of the assets. He adds that the properties “were all small and non-institutional ones except for the Union Lofts building. We had already operationally added value through better management, increasing run-rate NOI dramatically. Any more value increase would have to come from additional capital and required a refinance as debt was coming due.” Additional dispositions from EVOQ may occur in the near future “depending on value-creation potential.”