After receiving unsolicited offers from prospective buyers for years, the Artiles family gave in and sold a four-building industrial portfolio in Medley for $38.8 million.
Ruben Artiles Jr. and Martha Artiles, through the Ruben and Neida Artiles Irrevocable Trust, sold the pair of warehouses at 7200-7208 Northwest 84th Avenue, and the two warehouses at 8203-8251 Northwest 70th Street, to Boston-based Longpoint, the brokers involved in the deal said.
Jose Sasson-Lerner and Roberto Susi of Axiom Capital Advisors represented Longpoint. Ralph Merritt of Commercial Property Group represented the seller in the off-market deal.
Interested buyers chased the sellers for four years, Merritt said, attributing the interest to South Florida’s industrial market growth over roughly the past half decade. “Eventually, they settled with Longpoint, who they felt was the best suitor,” he said.
Longpoint offered the highest price, though other prospective buyers came close, according to Merritt. The Artiles family felt most comfortable with Longpoint, including due to its ability to close.
Longpoint, led by co-founders Dwight Angelini, Nilesh Bubna, Reid Parker and Robert Provost III, has been a frequent investor in South Florida’s market. The real estate private equity firm had more than $5 billion worth of assets under management as of last year, according to its website.
Longpoint paid $264 per square foot for the 146,700-square-foot portfolio.
The late Ruben Artiles, an entrepreneur, developed the warehouses. He completed the complex at 7200-7208 Northwest 84th Avenue on 4.2 acres in 1997, and completed the one at 8203-8251 Northwest 70th Street on 2.5 acres in 1987, according to property records.
Tenants at the Northwest 84th Avenue complex include sports equipment freight forwarders Sand Point Logistics, ZIX Corporation and Kiomex. At the Northwest 70th Street complex, tenants include fresh food packaging company Vencol, and vitamins and supplements shop Baes Nutrition Labs.
South Florida’s industrial market prospered in the past five years, benefitting from an influx of out-of-state residents and businesses that increased e-commerce demand and the need for distribution centers. Developers seized on this with speculative warehouse construction, bringing more supply on the market just as demand for large 200,000-plus-square-foot spaces cooled, according to CBRE’s second quarter Miami-Dade industrial report.
This softened the market and pushed up the vacancy rate. In the second quarter, overall Miami-Dade vacancy hit 7.1 percent, up from 6.3 percent during the same time last year, CBRE’s report shows. Yet, landlords are pushing up rents, with the county average hitting $17.22 per square foot, triple net, in the second quarter, or 4 percent higher year-over-year.
Despite the uptick in overall vacancy and elevated interest rates, investors have pressed on with industrial purchases.
This month, an entity in the care of J.P. Morgan Investment Management paid $65 million for a complex used as the printing press for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. Blackstone’s Link Logistics sold the property.
Longpoint paid $31.5 million in August for the fully leased Tree Garden Business Park at 4005 and 4055 Northwest 79th Avenue in Doral, and also paid $82 million for the six-warehouse America’s Gateway Park complex in Doral.
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