YMP Real Estate adds another Broward office complex to portfolio

For the second time in five months, YMP Real Estate beefed up its commercial portfolio by acquiring a Broward County office complex.

An affiliate of Lauderdale Lakes-based YMP, led by Moshe and Yaffa Popack, paid $26 million for Commercial Place I and II, a pair of office buildings at 3230 and 3250 West Commercial Boulevard in Oakland Park, records show. The buyer also obtained a $18.2 million mortgage from Israel Discount Bank of New York.

The deal breaks down to $142 a square foot. 

A Cushman & Wakefield team led by Scott O’Donnell and Mike Ciadella represented the seller, an affiliate of Beverly, Massachusetts-based Brookwood Financial Partners. 

In 2015, Brookwood paid $23.5 million for the 183,000-square-foot, 34-year-old complex, records show. Commercial Place I and II is 78 percent occupied and tenants include Progressive Insurance, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Travelers, CTS Engineering and HDR Engineering, a press release states. 

YMP has been on the hunt for underperforming office properties that have been impacted by market headwinds due to a high interest rate environment and higher cap rates. Oakland Park is also a suburban office market in Broward that doesn’t attract as much tenant demand as office towers in downtown Fort Lauderdale. It’s rare for office properties in the Oakland Park submarket to trade above $200 per square foot, but a 38-year-old, 40,000-square-foot building at 2950 West Cypress Creek Road that was renovated in 2022 recently traded at $230 a square foot, or $9.3 million, according to a CBRE press release. 

The three-story building was 90% occupied at the time of sale.

In April, YMP and partner Nathan Pollack purchased four office buildings in Miramar at a deep discount of $45 million compared to the previous sales price. The seller, Barry Sternlicht’s Miami Beach-based Starwood Capital Group, paid $82 million for Miramar Centre I and III and Huntington Centre I and II in 2015, records show. 

At the time of purchase, the four-building portfolio was 79 percent leased. 

YMP owns 25 multifamily, office buildings and three assisted living facilities in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and New Jersey, with a majority of its properties in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, according to the firm’s website. The portfolio spans 4,000 apartments and 1.3 million square feet, YMP’s website states. 

North of Fort Lauderdale, Oakland Park has recently experienced some new development activity. Last month, Newrock Partners and Brickbox Development nabbed a $60 million construction loan from S3 Capital Partners for Parc Residences, a planned seven-story mixed-use project with 165 apartments and 30,000 square feet of ground-floor retail at 3411 North Federal Highway. Nearby, the same joint venture completed Oaklyn, a mixed-use project with 274 apartments and 19,000 square feet of retail, in September.