Warehouse Sells After Two Years on Market

SANFORD, FL-Managing the personalities of the buyer, seller and the buyers’ attorney was the biggest challenge the Advantis Real Estate Service Cos.’ team of Bo Bradford and Tom McFadden had in closing the sale of a warehouse that was on the market for two years. Orlando entrepreneurs Gordon and Helen Phillips paid Leather Specialty Co. of Cincinnati a below-replacement price of $900,000, or $36.89 per sf, for a 24,396-sf warehouse at 2690 West Airport Rd. in the Longwood/Lake Mary/Sanford industrial market, about 20 miles north of Downtown Orlando.The seller did a four-month leaseback on the fully occupied, 35-year-old property sitting on nearly four acres. The new owners will use the building when the seller moves out. The deal took only three months to complete after Bradford-McFadden first got the listing in December. Besides the special challenges the Bradford-McFadden team faced in handling the personalities of the deal’s participants, the property also had “some minor contamination which had to be remediated,” Bradford tells GlobeSt.com. “This took time and was difficult to work through for both buyer and seller.”Additionally, the broker says “we had a lease agreement that had to be negotiated with the buyer, an agreement that was drafted by the buyer’s attorney that was difficult to work through.” Eventually, “we got it done,” says Bradford.”The deal was done at this time “as a result of several factors,” the broker tells GlobeSt.com. “The buyer was a tenant in another building which was recently sold to an investor who was going to raise the rent. The second reason was that the buyer needed a more functional space with room to grow.” A third factor in the deal was the market itself. The buyers “were motivated by today’s low interest rates and having a free-standing identity,” Bradford says.Closing any deal in the Longwood/Lake Mary/Sanford submarket today is an accomplishment, area brokers tell GlobeSt.com. The market has a 19.3% overall vacancy rate “due in large part to the 754,000 sf still available at the former Recoton buildings,” Lisa M. DeVore, director of research, Advantis/GVA, tells GlobeSt.com. The direct weighted average rental rate in that submarket for industrial space is $4.54 per sf, triple net.The Bradford-McFadden team has logged just over $8 million in leasing and sales transactional volume so far this year. The duo did $30 million in 2003.