Nuveen Real Estate bought two warehouses within the Weston Business Center for $110 million, marking the second biggest South Florida industrial deal this year.
San Francisco-based real estate investment trust Prologis sold the properties at 2935 and 2945 West Corporate Lakes Boulevard, records show. The deal breaks down to $275 per square foot.
Constructed in 2001, the buildings total nearly 400,000 square feet on 22.8 acres, according to property records. The warehouses last traded in 2010 for $39.5 million.
Tenants include importer Shopboard Center Weston, Hellmann Worldwide Logistics and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries.
The South Florida industrial market was the only property type to thrive during the pandemic last year, partly because consumers turned to online shopping. The demand for industrial properties, from last-mile distribution and manufacturing centers to warehouses, continued this year, fueling hefty investment sales activity.
In the biggest deal, CenterPoint Properties Trust paid $184.4 million for two warehouses and land at Countyline Corporate Park in Hialeah in January.
The robust market pushed up rents in Miami-Dade and Broward counties in the third quarter of this year. In Broward, the average asking rent for warehouses reached $9.68 a square foot, up from $9.19 during the same period of last year, according to a Colliers report. Tenant demand led the vacancy rate to drop to 5.6 percent, compared to 6.8 percent in the second quarter.
Some of the other top-dollar industrial deals this year include Cabot Properties’ purchase of the Bridge Point Miramar distribution center for $71.6 million in September.
In West Palm Beach, Jeff Greene sold his newly built industrial complex to Dalfen Industrial for $60.6 million, also in September.
Prologis, led by Hamid Moghadam, still is heavily betting on South Florida. It developed the master-planned, 436-acre Beacon Lakes business park in northwest Miami-Dade, and in May submitted an application to the county to add two 164,435-square-foot facilities to the property.
Chicago-based Nuveen, led by Mike Sales, has been beefing up its South Florida portfolio, focusing also on multifamily, another thriving asset class. It purchased the pair of LaVida apartment buildings at Blue Lagoon near Miami International Airport for $98 million in September.
Nuveen, a global real estate investment arm of TIAA, co-owns the Waterford Business District, one of Miami-Dade’s biggest office parks, also near the airport.