Rexford buys OC warehouse from American Realty Advisors for $94M

Rexford is not slowing down after its billion-dollar-buy from Blackstone. 

Rexford Industrial Realty has bought a warehouse in the Orange County city of Fullerton for $94.2 million, The Real Deal has learned. 

The firm paid about $338 a square foot for a roughly 279,000-square-foot warehouse at 1911 East Rosslynn Avenue, according to property records filed with Orange County. The property is fully leased, according to Rexford’s website. No loan was filed in connection with Rexford’s acquisition, making it likely Rexford paid in all cash, as it often does. 

The seller was American Realty Advisors, which had owned the building since 2005, records show. 

The deal comes less than two months after Rexford spent $1 billion to buy 48 industrial properties across Los Angeles and Orange counties from Blackstone. That deal came out to about the same on a per-square-foot basis: $332 a foot. 

Rexford has reaped the benefits of Southern California’s tight industrial market over the last few years, which came to a head in 2021, when vacancy across many Southern California industrial markets dropped below 1 percent, as consumers pivoted to more online shopping during the pandemic and companies needed extra space to store goods. 

The real estate investment trust’s  purchases have been slowing. In 2023, the firm spent $1.5 billion to acquire property in 2023, down from $2.4 billion in 2022.

The vacancy rate across Orange County industrial property was 1.5 percent in the first quarter, up 0.3 percent from the quarter prior, according to a CBRE report. However, over the last 15 years, the average has stood at above 2 percent. 

Other industrial hubs, including the nearby Inland Empire, have seen vacancy steadily rise and rents drop over the last 18 months, as more supply has come online and tenants have pulled back from expansion.