HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA-The sale of 5901 Bolsa Ave. here, which GlobeSt.com reported on yesterday, is the largest industrial transaction to take place in Orange County since 2003, Louis Tomaselli, senior managing director of Jones Lang LaSalle, tells GlobeSt.com. While the exact purchase price has not been disclosed, and JLL was not involved in the deal, Tomaselli says he has heard reports that the 493,319-square-foot industrial property here sold for between $50 million and $60 million.

The property, formerly occupied by Sharp Electronics, was sold by LBA Realty to Harbor Distribution/Reyes Family Holdings to be used as a distribution facility. Typically and historically, smaller properties have been in demand in this market.

“I think it is an extraordinary point in the recovery of the industrial market because the last large sale that occurred in the Orange County market of this size was in 2003 when Larry Bedrosian bought the 510,000-square-foot Steelcase facility in Tustin,” says Tomaselli. “That is an extremely large owner/occupier type of space in our market. Ten years later, Harbor Distribution buys a center in Huntington Beach—it speaks volumes to the strength of Orange County for a large distribution company to put that kind of capital into an asset here. You see that size deal every ten years; it's an extraordinarily large sale, and we all applaud those.”

The market has been improving dramatically, says Tomaselli. In fact, in checking the statistics for Orange County's industrial, he found that this sale moves the vacancy rates in Huntington Beach from 17.8% to 8.6%, in all of west Orange County from 10.1% to approximately 7% and all of Orange County to 5.2%. “With other leases signed, that puts the county's vacancy below 5%, which is pretty much in line with pre-recession 2008,” Tomaselli says. “And we still have rent growth since we don't have peak rent, which is another healthy indicator.”

Tomaselli adds that the former Sharp property is in an absolute class-A location, contains wonderful quarters and enjoys high image. “The sweet spot for tenants in logistics/distribution sector is 100,000 to 200,000 square feet. This is a very well-designed single-tenant corporate-headquarters building.”

As GlobeSt.com reported earlier today, the Orange County industrial market is continuing to recover, and the office market is showing increasing lease rates for the first time since before the downturn, Voit Real Estate Services tells GlobeSt.com exclusively. Both industrial vacancy and availability continue trending downward and have displayed percentage drops comparable to figures seen in 2012, and office lease rates finished the third quarter at a 1.6% increase from the previous year's rate.