North Miami industrial park sells for $21.25M

The North Miami Business Park was just sold for $21.25 million, a sale that listing agent Douglas Mandel said is a sign of the industrial market’s recovery.

The park is a 12-building complex that measures 214,318 square feet. It’s composed mostly of small-bay warehouses that measure a few thousand square feet apiece.

It was last sold for $21.75 million to a fund managed by Boston-based TA Associates Realty in 2005, which Mandel said was arguably the height of the market. Mandel and Benjamin Silver of commercial brokerage Marcus & Millichap represented the fund for the most recent sale.

The seller in 2005, a Coral Gables-based company titled NMBP Associates, has returned to the property a decade later as the new buyer. The price it paid to reacquire the park was just $500,000 below what it sold it for, which breaks down to about $2 per square foot less than the price it fetched at the market’s peak. The company took out a $15.93 loan from JPMorgan Chase Bank for the purchase.

Benjamin Silver and Douglas Mandel of Marcus & Millichap

“This sale demonstrated how the markets have rebounded to the same kind of frothy levels they were at previously,” Mandel told The Real Deal.

Mandel told TRD that the price premium is mostly because of scarcity. There are practically no small-bay warehouses being built in the area, and prices for space on the sought-after offices on Biscayne Boulevard can be prohibitive.

For the industrial park’s tenants, an eclectic mix of small businesses that range from music studios to stationery stores, the pricing provides an affordable alternative for a practical location, Mandel said. But even the park is experiencing price appreciation, with rents edging past $10 per square foot.

“The buyer anticipates tremendous rental rate growth driven by increased demand for small-bay warehouse space and the nearby development of SoLe Mia Miami, a joint venture between Turnberry Associates and LeFrak, which will add 4,390 residences, 1 million square feet of commercial space and a 150-[room] hotel,” Mandel said in a release about the sale.