Air conditioning company owner Douglas Anthony Perera is jumping into South Florida commercial real estate, after paying $14.3 million for a five-story office building in Broward County.
An entity managed by Perera, president of Davie-based Air Pros USA, acquired Cornerstone Five Corporate Center in Plantation, according to records and Vizzda. Perera’s entity assumed $9.7 million in mortgage debt from Valley National Bank as part of the transaction.
The deal breaks down to $233 per square foot for the 61,362-square-foot building completed in 2008.
The seller, Masa Global, paid $12.8 million for the 2-acre property at 1250 South Pine Island Road in 2018, records show.
Masa, led by CEO Marco Markin, is a medical transportation company headquartered at Cornerstone Five. Other tenants include Cohen Law Group, Fiske CPA, Legacy Wealth Management and Northstar Financial Partners, a Loopnet listing shows.
The Plantation office submarket had a 17.3 percent vacancy rate in the fourth quarter of last year, the same vacancy rate as for all of Broward, according to an Avison Young report. During the same period, the average asking rental rate for Plantation office properties hit $34.74 a square foot, compared to $37.73 a square foot for all of Broward.
Across the county, the average price per square foot for office trades dipped by 4.1 percent to $292.30 between the third and fourth quarter of last year, Avison Young found. Annual sales volume also dropped off last year to roughly $450 million, compared to more than $500 million in 2021, the report shows.
Few office properties have traded in Broward since the beginning of this year. Last month, Boyd Watterson Asset Management paid $38.2 million for a Veterans Affairs clinic in Sunrise. The property sold for 23.3 percent less than its previous sale price in 2017.
Across South Florida, the region has experienced a slowdown in office deals since the third quarter of last year, according to Vizzda.