Colony Capital Inc. has dealt a light industrial portfolio to Nuveen Real Estate for $136 million.
The Downtown Los Angeles-based investor sold the 2.3-million-square-foot portfolio through its Dallas, Texas-based platform Colony Industrial, according to the L.A. Business Journal. It comprises 34 properties in Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. About half are in Atlanta.
New Jersey has one of the hottest industrial markets in the country. Around $2.6 billion worth of property traded in 2018. Average prices rose 19 percent last year to $126.67 per square foot.
More broadly, the availability of warehouse space across the country last year was the lowest it’s been since 2000. Demand exceeded supply by about 6 million square feet in the fourth quarter alone, and 29 million square feet for the year.
Some investors are looking to cash in on demand. Black Creek Group is weighing a sale of its 240-property Industrial Property Trust REIT. The portfolio could be worth $3.5 billion.
Colony Capital found itself in the news earlier this month for chairman Tom Barrack’s bizarre comments in Abu Dhabi about Saudi Arabia’s killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Barrack, whose company owns hundreds of millions of dollars of real estate in the region, downplayed the murder, saying, “atrocities in America are equal, or worse, to the atrocities in Saudi Arabia.” [LABJ] — Dennis Lynch