(Mark Your Calendars. The 11th Annual RealShare Washington, DC Convenes at the Ritz Carlton, June 1.)

JESSUP, MD-Cabot Properties has acquired a five-asset, 675,967-square foot portfolio, for $35.2 million. Invesco is the seller of the warehouses, which are all located in the Baltimore-Washington Corridor.

Three of the properties, 8241, 8242-8246 Sandy Court, are all in Jessup; one is located at 6600 Business Pkwy, in Elkridge; and one at 9645 Gerwig La. in Columbia. Jim Darby and Mark Glagola of Transwestern brokered the sale of behalf of Invesco. It will provide management services for all five buildings and, under Tom Genter’s stewardship, leasing services for the three Sandy Court properties.

The portfolio has a 35% vacancy rate, making this an obvious value-add play for Cabot, Darby tells GlobeSt.com. “The way Invesco grouped the properties for the sale was smart,” he says. “Two of the five buildings are anchored by single tenants.” Cabot intends to hold the properties for seven to 10 years, leasing them up via an aggressive marketing program.

The company is also counting on the positive momentum in the local industrial market to continue, Darby says—an expectation that is supported by a number of statistics. Cushman & Wakefield, for instance, predicts that tenant activity in the second quarter of 2012 will yield positive absorption for the market and modestly decrease its vacancy rates.

A report from Cassidy Turley found that the larger Baltimore industrial market experienced more than 600,000 square feet of positive absorption in Q1 of 2012, fueled by strong demand that also drove the overall vacancy rate down to 12.67%. “Value-add deals like the Cabot acquisition will look like very smart plays three to five years from now,” Darby predicts.