Hines spends $91M to buy massive Cerritos self-storage facility

Hines has bought a 2,460-unit self-storage facility in Cerritos for $91 million.

The Texas-based developer bought the 260,300-square-foot Extra Space Storage at 17900 Crusader Avenue, next to the 605 Freeway, the Orange County Business Journal reported. The seller was Manhattan Beach-based Capital 360 and Barings, based in North Carolina.

The deal works out to $350 per square foot. A typical price in the U.S. self-storage market during the second quarter was $139, according to Cushman & Wakefield.

Brokers Nick Walker and Trevor Roberts of CBRE’s Self Storage Advisory Group represented the seller.

“This is the largest single-property self-storage sale in history, and our team fielded many competitive offers throughout the marketing process,” Walker said in an email to the Business Journal.

Capital 360 and Barings bought the 5-acre site in 2018 for an undisclosed price. The joint venture then developed the three-story building, which opened two years later.

Extra Space Storage is a third-party management company based in Salt Lake City. At the time of sale, the self-storage facility was 88 percent occupied.

Cerritos is one of the so-called Gateway Cities located in Los Angeles County near the border with Orange County.

Capital 360, led by Brian Shniderson, specializes in Class A properties, according to the firm.

Investment in the self-storage sector surged during the pandemic, with $50 billion in transactions from 2020 to 2022, according to a report from Cushman & Wakefield.

The brokerage called the current market a “return to normal,” with deal volume of $3.36 billion in the first half of the year, less than 1 percent higher than the same period last year.

“Relative to other commercial real estate property types, investors view self storage … as a safe haven during economic downturns, buoyed by countercyclical demand drivers,” the report states.

Hines, founded in 1957 by Gerald Hines and now led by Jeffrey Hines and Laura Hines-Pierce, has $93 billion in real estate assets under management in 31 countries, according to its website.

This spring, Hines and Canada-based Trez Capital secured a $108 million loan for a 13-property self-storage portfolio across Dallas-Fort Worth. Separately, Hines is developing two self-storage facilities nearby.

— Dana Bartholomew