Built in 1992, the center is 100% occupied by tenants including Bank of America, Cookies by Design, Prudential Realty, Hallmark and Malibu Gym. It is shadow-anchored by a Vons grocery store, which was not part of the transaction.

Rick Fox, a spokesperson for Inland Western, says the buyer was attracted to the property because it fits Inland's criteria: a grocery-anchored community shopping center "at a dollar figure that allows us to give positive returns to our investors." Although Inland Western does not own the grocery store, Fox explains, tenants at the North Ranch center benefit from the traffic at the grocery story. Inland was also attracted to the Thousand Oaks community for its demographics of about 150,000 people with an average household income of about $118,000 within a five-mile radius of North Ranch Pavilions, Fox adds. He says that Inland Western is looking for other retail properties in select markets West of the Mississippi River, including Los Angeles, but the properties must make sense for Inland to even consider them. "We aren't forcing ourselves into any markets just to be there," says Fox, who notes that the company is also looking at select areas of Dallas, San Antonio,TX, Denver, Phoenix and St. Louis.

The buyer of the North Ranch property, Inland Western Retail Real Estate Trust Inc., is one of three REITs originally sponsored by The Inland Real Estate Group of Cos. This specific REIT purchased its first property Oct. 31, 2003, and now owns 15 properties in Texas, Oklahoma, California, Illinois, Indiana, Connecticut, Georgia and other locations.

The other two REITs, Inland Retail Real Estate Trust Inc. and Inland Real Estate Corp., own similar properties east of the Mississippi and in the MidWest, respectively. Fox notes that with the combination of these REITs and other corporate holdings of nearly 500 retail properties totaling more than 62.5 million sf, the Inland Real Estate Group of Cos. is ranked as the fifth largest owner of shopping centers in North America by the International Council of Shopping Centers.