One of Southern California’s biggest industrial players has extended a months-long buying spree, an indication of its confidence in the region’s white hot industrial market.
Rexford Industrial Realty, a REIT and industrial developer based in Los Angeles, bought seven properties in June and July for a total of $660 million, the company announced Wednesday.
In a statement, Howard Schwimmer and Michael Frankel, the company’s co-CEOs, called Greater L.A. “the nation’s highest demand and lowest vacancy industrial market.”
Rexford’s most recent purchases, like its other purchases this year, spanned the region. The firm bought two properties in the Inland Empire, three in the South Bay, one in Simi Valley and one in southeast L.A. County.
By far the largest purchase was a $470 million — or $445 per square foot — six-building industrial complex in Eastvale, a relatively new community in northwestern Riverside County. The complex has more than 1 million square feet on 50 acres, Rexford said, with more than 70 percent leased. The seller appears to have been Dermody Properties, a national industrial developer that in March announced it had leased one of the complex’s buildings to “a Fortune 500 company.” A representative for Dermody did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the sale of the complex.
Rexford’s other Inland Empire purchase was a $48 million, or $382 per square foot, Class A building in nearby Jurupa Valley. The firm also paid $56 million for a 187,000-square-foot building in Simi Valley and $41 million for a building on 6 acres along 5 Freeway in Commerce.
In the South Bay, Rexford paid $21 million for a site in Torrance, $9 million for a vacant building in Gardena and $17 million for a vacant building in L.A.’s Wilmington neighborhood.
This spring and summer Rexford had already spent more than $500 million on properties that included sites in Orange County, the San Fernando Valley and the Inland Empire; earlier this year, among other deals, the firm bought a business park in Long Beach and an industrial building in Northeast L.A. that had been the focus of a gentrification fight because of a proposed housing development. To date this year the REIT has spent more than $1.6 billion, it said.
Southern California’s industrial market has been hot throughout much of the pandemic, particularly in the more spacious Inland Empire: In January one report put industrial vacancies in the two-county region at 0.8 percent, the lowest in the country, and the booming submarket has even led many Inland Empire cities seeking bans on warehouse development.
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