Jason Miszuk, one of the listing brokers tells GlobeSt.com the seller was Festival Outdoor Advertising LLC and the buyer was Spring Mountain Plaza LLC. Both LLCs are based in California. The buyer, which was completing an IRS 1031 Exchange acquired a $4.7-million, non recourse loan on the property as part of the deal.

"The assumable loan helped the deal," says Miszuk, who was assisted in the deal by fellow Sun Commercial brokers Cathy Jones, Brad Spies, Paul Miachika and Logan Schrumpf.

The largest tenant is the grocery store, Mediterranean Market, which occupies about 20% of the space. The next largest is KJ's Chinese Kitchen. There are 13 tenants in total.

The average triple-net rent in the center is $1.97 per square foot and that recent five-year deal at the center was done at $2 per square foot, which is as much as $1 per square foot less than the lease rates at the nearby newer centers are. The sale price equates to a 7% cap rate based on a 2009 pro forma NOI that assumes 5% vacancy, Miszuk says.

A new third quarter retail market report from locally based Applied Analysis found that the average retail lease rate for the entire Las Vegas region was $2.16 per square foot, which is just below the second quarter and slightly ahead of the same 2007 quarter. The average for neighborhood centers specifically was $1.99 per square foot.

Market-wide vacancy came in at 6.3%, up 20 basis points from the second quarter and up 260 basis points from the third quarter of 2007, when vacancy was just 3.7%. The market expanded by 307,000 square feet during the quarter while demand came in at 232,000 square feet. The current vacancy rate is the highest the market has seen in "well over a decade," according to the report.

Despite the rising vacancy rate, an additional 3.1 million square feet of retail was under construction at the end of the quarter. Selected projects under construction include the mixed-use Summerlin Centre in the west submarket; phase two of Lake Mead Crossing Power Center in Henderson anchored by Home Depot; the mixed-use Tivoli Village at Queensridge; and The Edge in Mountain's Edge anchored by Von's.

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