Europeans With $1B-Plus Purse Eye Florida Properties

Overseas investors are also noticing commercial real estate activity here. Beverly Pupa, a broker with Tampa-based Viewpoint Realty International, tells GlobeSt.com a European investment consortium has budgeted $1.5 billion to buy 100 to 150 non-performing properties per month in Florida.

"I have been contacted by a European broker who is working with investors there who would like to buy [Florida properties] in mass quantity at wholesale prices," Pupa says. "They will buy whole portfolios of non-performing properties or, as I've been educating them, an entire subdivision at pre-construction prices."

Pupa is looking for brokers who would work with her in assembling the properties for the Europeans. "Each scenario provides more than enough for everyone involved to do very well," she says.

In newly recorded land sales, meanwhile, Agere Systems Inc. of Allentown, PA sold 15 acres off John Young Parkway and Consulate Drive in south Orlando to EastGroup Properties of Jackson, MS for $1.9 million or $126,666 per acre ($2.90 per sf). EastGroup plans to use the site to expand its SouthRidge industrial development.

Trevor Hall Jr., land services director for the Orlando office of Colliers Arnold Real Estate Services Co., negotiated for the seller. EastGroup's John Coleman represented his company. "Deals are being made on a fairly regular basis but buyers are more selective and a lot more knowledgeable today than they might have been in past years," Hall tells GlobeSt.com.

In Rockledge, in Brevard County, Texas-based D.R. Horton Inc. paid $2.7 million, or $106,550 per acre, for a 25.3-acre parcel on Murrell Road adjacent to the Turtle Creek golf course. Sebastian Pynaker, as trustee, sold the land for $2.45 per sf.

A 33-acre tract near Orlando International Airport went for $6.48 million or $196,363 per acre. Flagship Development-Carter Glenn LLC paid $4.50 per sf for the land at the northwest corner of LeeVista Boulevard and Goldenrod Road. The seller was Daryl Carter, as trustee for the Carter-OCC Land Trust. The buyer plans to develop a 426-townhome project on the site which includes the 450-acre Orlando Corporate Center development also owned by the Carter-OCC Land Trust. "The land deals are out there, but sometimes it takes a great deal of looking to find the right deal for the right project," Carter tells GlobeSt.com.