Christian Lee, Jose Lobon and Amy Julian of CBRE.

The buyers' pool for a five-building Miramar industrial portfolio was full of heavy hitters like pension fund advisers chasing an active South Florida.

Stockbridge Capital Group beat other big-name institutional investors competing to buy the fully leased portfolio for $116.5 million.

"It's hard to buy industrial real estate in South Florida. It's very competitive. Particularly when you see something of this size, multiple buildings," said Jose Lobon, who was part of the CBRE Group Inc. team that marketed the property. "The opportunity to be able to buy in one stroke over 600,000 square feet of Class A, high-quality institutional industrial real estate in South Florida, those opportunities don't come around that frequently."

Stockbridge, a San Francisco-based private equity real estate investor, bought the 607,223-square-foot portfolio Aug. 16 from industrial developer IDI Logistics LLC, which shared portfolio ownership with institutional investors.

The buildings are spread along Miramar Parkway on both sides of Interstate 75.

[falcon-embed src="embed_1"]

A CBRE team in Miami and Atlanta closed the deal. In Miami, Lobon, who is executive vice president, worked with vice chairman Christian Lee on behalf of the sellers. CBRE Capital Markets vice chairman Chris Riley worked the deal from Atlanta.

First vice president Amy Julian, who is with CBRE's debt and structured finance team, and financial analyst Royce Rose, both in Miami, also worked with industrial leasing senior vice president Larry Dinner in Fort Lauderdale on the transaction.

"Obviously the market is very strong for institutional industrial real estate in South Florida so it was a good time to sell," Lobon said.

Industrial properties are coveted because the asset class is strong thanks to a favorable tip in supply and demand. There's a healthy appetite in part fueled by e-commerce growth. The supply can't keep up in part because there's not enough room in land-constrained South Florida to build new properties. Complicating the matter is that industrial real estate can't be built anywhere but should be near major road arteries as well as near ports and airports.

To this point, 22.3 million square feet was built in the past five years, much less than the 37 million square feet absorbed, according to CBRE.

This trend is more pronounced in Broward where 7 million square feet was built — about half of the 15.6 million square feet absorbed.

The Miramar buildings generated a lot of interest also because they are well-located, Lobon said.

The 22-acre portfolio comprises three buildings at 11600, 11650 and 11740 Miramar Parkway in an area bounded by Florida's Turnpike, Miramar Parkway, Red Road and Flamingo Road plus two other buildings at 15701 SW 29th St. and 2501 SW 160th Ave. northwest of I-75 and Miramar Parkway.

This puts them close to the Miami-Dade-Broward County line.

"It serves as a very, very good location to service both Broward and Dade simultaneously," Lobon said. "Tenants have gravitated into cross-county locations, and investors like buildings in these locations because of the cross-county capabilities."

Broward County property records list the building at 11600 Miramar at 186,011 square feet, 11650 Miramar at 62,008 square feet, 11740 Miramar at 40,896 square feet, the 29th Street building at 263,057 square feet and the 160th Avenue building at 55,574 square feet.

This adds up to 607,546 square feet, slightly more than the 607,223 square footage listed in a news release about the transaction. The difference might cover spaces like outdoor loading areas or other areas not under air conditioning.

The deal took two months with one month of marketing, which included several bidding rounds, and another month to close a deal that breaks down to $192 per square foot.

IDI Logistics, with offices throughout the U.S., build the portfolio in the 2000s.

The institutional investors who sold the portfolio along with IDI were advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management, part of JPMorgan Chase & Co.

"Developers have many capital partners, and this just happened to be a deal with many capital partners," Lobon said, although he declined to identify them.

This isn't the first time Stockbridge beat competitors for South Florida industrial real estate. Last February, it acquired the Powerline Business Park in Deerfield Beach for $62.25 million. The business park comprises 24 small-bay industrial buildings.

Stockbridge, which has $14.4 billion of assets under management, also owns non-industrial property in South Florida, including the 20-story 110 East Broward office tower in downtown Fort Lauderdale and the seven-story Mason Building retail property in Miami's Design District.

The Miramar portfolio sale closed days before the biggest industrial sale this year in Florida, also brokered by Lobon, Lee and Riley. RREEF America, a subsidiary of DWS Investment Management Americas Inc., bought Hialeah's Centergate at Gratigny from Prudential Financial Inc. subsidiary PGIM for $178 million Aug. 22.

CBRE has declined to comment on this transaction.

As for the Miramar deal, it's unusual for a portfolio this size to come up for sale, Lobon said.

"There aren't than many properties that come for sale every year because everybody is trying to buy," he said.

San Francisco Investor Beats Competition to Buy Powerline Business Park

South Florida Sees Surge of Institutional, REIT Industrial Investment

$178M Hialeah Centergate Sale Is Florida's Biggest Industrial Deal This Year

Instant Insights /

CBRE Team Details Competitive $117M Miramar Industrial Portfolio Sale

Related Stories

Recommended For You