2015, A Good Year for Industrial

LOS ANGELES—This was a busy year for industrial investors, who saw swelling competition for product in the face of extremely tight supply throughout Southern California. Rexford Industrial remained focused on off-market transactions this year in an effort to acquire $250 million in value-add industrial product. With the year officially at a close, Rexford came in just shy of its goal, buying $247 million in product this year and increasing its portfolio size by 21%.

"On marketed transactions, we are seeing pricing continue to approach what some people might describe as peak levels, and, for that reason, we primarily focus on off-market transactions," Michael Frankel, the co-CEO of Rexford Industrial, tells GlobeSt.com, adding that the firm finds opportunities through professional contacts and maintains a competitive edge by buying off-market.

In an earlier conversation in December, Frankel told GlobeSt.com, "there is still a few days left in the year" for the company to make its goal. At the time, Rexford had racked up $230 million in acquisitions for the year. The sale to put the public REIT within a range of its goal was the purchase of an 114,912-square-foot industrial property in Huntington Beach, purchased for $17.7 million. The property sits on 5.4 acres and is 100% leased. "This highly functional class-A facility represents a mission-critical, difficult to replicate location for the in-place credit tenant on a long-term lease," says Frankel and Rexford co-CEO Howard Schwimmer.

For the co-CEOs, the firm's acquisitions for the year are well received. "The goal that was communicated to the market was to acquire around $250 million of product," Frankel adds. "We are excited with the accretive nature of our acquisitions throughout 2015, which represented a 21% square footage increase in our portfolio since the beginning of the year."