Edens pays $137M for supermarket-anchored portfolio

Grocery stores might be the new darling of commercial investment.

Edens, a Washington, D.C.-based retail investor, bought three grocery-anchored shopping centers across Los Angeles for nearly $137 million, according to an announcement from Newmark on Monday.

Beverly Hills-based Combined Properties sold the retail centers, which total around 402,000 square feet. A team led by Newmark’s Pete Bethea and Glenn Rudy brokered the deal on behalf of the seller.

Edens bought a 216,000-square-foot center at 802 West Beverly Boulevard in Montebello, anchored by Vons; a 121,000-square-foot property at 1600 Foothill Boulevard in La Verne, also anchored by Vons; and a 65,000-square-foot complex at 1375 Foothill Boulevard in La Verne, anchored by Sprouts Farmers Market.

Combined Properties has owned the properties since at least 2004, records show. The firm reeled in a hefty profit from the sale of 1600 Foothill Boulevard — it bought the complex for $7.2 million in 2004, and just sold it for $41.5 million as part of the portfolio.

At $340 a square foot, the deal is both one of the few and more expensive retail deals to trade on a per-square-foot basis in recent months. In September, Monrovia-based investor Wen Shan Chang bought the 1.5 million-square-foot Westfield Santa Anita for about $360 a square foot.

Commercial investment sales dropped 23 percent year-over-year in the third quarter, according to Newmark, but retail was the only sector within commercial to see a jump in deals.

Grocery stores have fared particularly well, as investors and institutional capital has come to see the sector as resilient to a recession. When the pandemic hit, grocery stores were deemed essential and saw a large uptick in sales — hitting $803 billion in 2021, up 16 percent from 2019, according to JLL.