Here’s LA County’s Priciest Industrial Sale of Q2

The biggest industrial transaction in Los Angeles County over the last quarter was the sale of a cold-storage complex at 15015 Valley View Avenue in Santa Fe Springs for $140.3 million, according to Los Angeles County tax assessor records.

This feature is being launched as a weekly update on quarterly top sales by market segment, based on TRD Data. You can see the top five by clicking here.

New York-based real estate investment trust W.P. Carey paid $422.65 per square foot for the 302,850-square-foot industrial property to a Brookfield-backed fund in May.

Newmark’s Andrew Briner, Jim Linn and Bret Hardy, Kevin Shannon and Aaron Banks represented the seller in the $128 million deal, the firm said in a news release.

The 302,850-square-foot cold storage warehouse and distribution center, fully leased to United Natural Foods on a long-term contract, was under renovation at the time of the sale. It was billed as having a “new, state-of-the-art refrigeration system,” per Newmark.

The structure is on 16.7 acres of industrially zoned land adjacent to the region’s freeway network in the infill Mid-Counties submarket. It features 26-foot to 35-foot clear heights, dock high loading and ample trailer parking. Ninety percent of the property is temperature-controlled.

W. P. Carey, helmed by CEO Jason E. Fox, was able to “acquire this asset at pricing significantly below replacement cost,” Briner said in a statement.

Brookfield, whose real estate business is led by Lowell Baron, acquired the property from Unified Grocers for $68 million, marking the largest industrial property sale in the county in the third quarter of 2020, The Real Deal previously reported.

“We successfully executed our business plan by repositioning this asset into a long-term leased core asset in one of the tightest industrial markets in the country,” Joonas Partanen, head of West Coast operations for Brookfield Properties, said in the release.

There were 14 industrial sales transactions totaling $389 million in the Los Angeles industrial market in the second quarter, according to a Q2 Avison Young report.

“Investors [are] favoring stabilized, income-generating assets,” the brokerage says in the report. “Private buyers and owner-users are also active, capitalizing on softening prices.”