Arlington Retail Site Goes for $129 per SF

ARLINGTON, TX-In a buy one, sell one strategy, a Dallas investor has sold a retail building for $129 per sf in Arlington and bought one right down the street for less as he plots a similar turnaround play along one of the city’s busiest retail corridors.

“The surprise is that a property sold for $129 per sf at a 10.29% cap in Arlington,” Gavin Kam of Marcus & Millichap’s Dallas office tells GlobeSt.com. According to the Tarrant County Appraisal District, Larry D. Smith of Dallas is the seller of 501 N. Collins St., a 5,112-sf building leased to First Cash Financial Services on a 15-year, absolute triple net contract.

Kam says the seller collected $660,000 for the holding from Khairi Etux Fauzia Aburubia of Houston, who was satisfying a 1031 Exchange with the acquisition. The appraisal district pegged the property’s 2002 assessment at $425,000.

The 29-year-old building, sitting on a half acre, was renovated in 2000 when First Cash was signed as a tenant. First Cash, which has more than 110 stores in six US states and Mexico, lends money secured by personal property.

Kam represented the seller. Jerry Goldstein of Marcus & Millichap’s Houston office secured the buyer.

Smith, in turn, bought 821 Collins St., but not in a 1031 Exchange process. The 6,186-sf retail building, also constructed in 1973 and sitting on about a half acre, is being rehabbed for a discount retailer signed within days of the closing. The purchase price, Kam says, “was in excess of $300,000 but below its $390,000 assessment.”

Jeff Smith of Cawley International in Dallas represented the seller, Bianca LLC of Dallas, which put the property on the market when tenant Altamere Window Tinting moved out. Kam represented the buyer.