Vacant Commercial Building Sells for $750,000

CAPE CORAL, FL-A commercial building here that has been vacant for about a year has flipped for $750,000. The price equates to $187.50 per sf. Henry Demers and Marion Demers purchased the freestanding building, formerly the Lazy Flamingo Restaurant, from Cape Coral Roasters Inc. The 4,000-sf building is located at 3522 Del Prado Blvd.Paul A. Sands of Grubb & Ellis/VIP, who negotiated the sale, says the buyers are investors who plan to turn the asset around and lease it out to a local restaurateur. The property didn’t sit vacant because of a lack of a buyer. Instead, there was a prepayment penalty and a disagreement between the seller and the mortgage holder on how much that penalty would be, the broker explains. This had to be resolved before the building could be sold.Sands says he had gotten four or five contracts for the sale of the building, but they did not go through for one reason or another. He had it sold at one time to a bank that wanted to tear it down, but then the bank was acquired. Other potential buyers did not want to wait for the issue with the mortgage holder to be resolved, he says.