Auto-service tenants sit in a small but closely watched corner of the net lease world, where the lease often matters as much as the business under it. The latest Matthews data makes one thing clear: this is not a one-size-fits-all trade, even within a narrow band of brands and formats.
Investors are not pricing "auto" as a single story. Instead, they are sorting credit, box size and lease structure tenant by tenant and the spreads in caps and deal flow show that work is happening in real time.
Transactions And Pricing
Advance Auto Parts is still doing the most volume among the parts chains in the Matthews sample, with 15 transactions year-to-date in 2026, on top of 36 in the first half of 2025 and 62 in the second. O'Reilly Auto Parts is not far behind at 12 deals year-to-date, while Jiffy Lube logged 14, Caliber closed eight and Mavis Tires & Brakes just four over the same period.
Then there is Take 5 Oil Change, which stands out with 81 transactions in the back half of 2025 and another 81 so far in 2026, a level of churn that makes it one of the most actively traded names in the set.
Pricing is just as fragmented. Year-to-date 2026, Advance Auto Parts is trading at an average cap rate of 7.45%, the highest among the group. Jiffy Lube is close behind at 7.17%, while O'Reilly sits at 6.58%, Caliber at 6.20% and Mavis at 5.65%. Take 5 falls in the middle at 6.11%, suggesting investors see it as a step up from the riskier paper but not in the same lane as the lowest-yielding assets.
None of those lines up perfectly with the lease term or brand size, which is why so many buyers say they are underwriting these assets line by line rather than by category.
Credit And Structure
Credit is one of the few things that still looks familiar. O'Reilly carries a BBB rating, the strongest in the group, followed by Take 5's parent Driven Brands at BBB-, Advance Auto Parts at BB+ and Caliber at B. Mavis and Jiffy Lube show up as private companies with no rating, which pushes investors back toward store-level performance and lease quality when they price those deals.
The leases themselves are a study in nuance. O'Reilly is working with a 20‑year NN structure and scheduled bumps starting in Year 11 and in the options. Advance Auto Parts uses 15‑year leases, often on a NNN/NN basis with increases pushed into the option periods.
Take 5 offers what many net lease buyers like to see: a straightforward NNN lease, 15‑year term and 10 percent rent bumps every five years. Jiffy Lube's leases can be NNN or NN, with rent growth either in 10 percent steps every five years or at two percent annually, while Mavis and Caliber lean on longer NNN-style terms with growth bands in the five to 10 percent range every five years. The field may be narrow, but the paper is not homogeneous.
Size, Rent And Store Format
The footprints show why these assets often appeal to different buyers. Caliber is the outlier in terms of size, with a typical store around 16,505 square feet and an average annual rent of $250,534, effectively operating as a small-format industrial box in many markets.
Mavis and O'Reilly cluster around 7,000 to 7,225 square feet, with average rent of roughly $160,336 and $130,000, respectively. Advance Auto Parts sits in a similar range, at about 7,000 square feet and $105,000 in annual rent. Jiffy Lube is the smallest of the group, with a typical 2,800‑square‑foot store and annual rent of about $108,000.
Take 5 pushes the small-box idea even further. Its average location is just 1,500 square feet, with averages for annual rent of $109,203 and sales of $1.32 million. These are numbers that translate into a very high rent per square foot and a heavily service-driven business.
When buyers talk about "auto," they are therefore talking about at least three very different products: big-box collision and service centers, mid-box parts stores and compact bay-driven concepts like Jiffy Lube and Take 5.
What The Market Is Saying
The on‑market pipeline makes the segmentation even more obvious. Advance Auto Parts has the deepest bench, with 70 properties on the market at an average cap rate of 7.34% and roughly seven years of term remaining. O'Reilly has 22 listings averaging 5.93% caps and eight years of remaining term, while Mavis shows 23 assets on the market at 5.91% caps and 14 years left on the clock.
Jiffy Lube and Caliber each bring more than 20 properties to market, with caps of 6.29% and 6.10%, respectively, and remaining terms of around nine to 10 years.
Take 5 again stands out, with 95 properties on the market at 6.08% cap rates and 15 years of average term remaining. For buyers who still want long duration but are reluctant to move too far down the credit spectrum, that combination of term and yield is likely part of the appeal. Recent sales comps back up the idea that the market is discriminating, not indiscriminate.
Advance Auto's recent trades reached into the high‑7% range, including a 7.87% cap in Spartanburg, South Carolina, while O'Reilly's deals mostly clustered in the mid‑5% to mid‑6% band. Take 5's comps ran from around 5.40% to 7.00%, with prices generally between about $1.3 million and $1.9 million, suggesting buyers are calibrating price to term and location rather than treating the brand as a monolith.
Taken together, the Matthews numbers show a sector that still rewards investors willing to do the extra work. The auto segment is not behaving like a single asset class, and tenants such as Take 5, Jiffy Lube and Caliber are carving out their own lanes alongside the more familiar parts brands. For now, the better paper appears to be the leases that marry credit, duration and usable real estate; everything else is being priced more case by case than by category.
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