“Homes for Business” Idea Drives Guthrie

NEWPORT BEACH, CA-Purchasing vacant industrial properties and renovating them to sell to owner/users, or developing single-tenant industrial properties to sell is the model on which locally based Guthrie Development runs. Comparing it to the housing market, CEO and founder Rob Guthrie tells GlobeSt.com that in many ways, the firm thinks of itself as more of a homebuilder than a multifamily developer in that it prefers to rehab single-tenant properties and sell them to individual users rather than hold them long term.

As GlobeSt.com reported earlier today, the firm has acquired its first property in several years: a two-building, 61,155-square-foot warehouse and manufacturing facility at 1295 W. Lambert Rd. in Brea, and then subsequently foreclosed on the property, taking control of it. Guthrie plans to significantly upgrade the property and sell to an owner/user.

Guthrie is also looking to acquire existing industrial properties on developable land. The firm has developed 1.9 million square feet in Orange County.

“We are 100% industrial,” says Guthrie. “All we do are industrial deals. And we have a niche in working on small stuff for sale. We are primarily involved in three counties—Orange County, Los Angeles and San Diego—although we do look at the Inland Empire, too.”

In today's industrial market, a top-down philosophy prevails whereby the bigger product recovers sooner than the smaller, Guthrie says. “We have been in a smaller size range because that's what's been active. We're looking for both industrial land and existing buildings—especially vacant buildings. We like the market for the owner/user buyer, and if we don't have to deal with an existing tenant, we can get right at the buildings and spruce them up.”

The firm's old tag line of “homes for business” still rings true. “That's the best way to describe us,” says Guthrie. “We're kind of like a homebuilder: we buy land, build 20 little buildings and sell them to owner/users, vs. the apartment builder who buys a project, builds it up, leases it and owns it forever.”

Guthrie adds that coastal markets have been strongest for the firm in that owner/users of industrial buildings in California “tend to live in really nice communities.”