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LOS ANGELES-TA Associates Realty recently acquired a 51-building Southern California industrial portfolio for more than $200 million, according to local sources. The local office of the Boston-based investment firm quietly closed on the 1.7 million-sf portfolio in a multi-phase purchase in late June that included buildings spread fairly evenly between Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego.
The properties were part of 9.6 million-sf portfolio of bulk distribution, light industrial and service center building sold by a joint venture of TIAA CREF and Rreef Funds for more than $700M. The so-called CalTIA portfolio is believed to be the largest investor portfolio sale in the US this year. The rest of the portfolio--7.9 million sf in 79 buildings in Atlanta, Baltimore, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Dallas, Miami, Orlando and San Francisco--was sold to Denver-based Dividend Capital for $496.4 million. GlobeSt.com reported that portion of the deal on May 23 and it closed in early June.
The piece acquired by TA includes 13 buildings in LA totaling 673,000 sf that were 100% leased, 16 buildings totaling 526,000 sf in Orange County that were 84% leased and 22 buildings in San Diego totaling 514,000 sf that were 98% leased. Trammell Crow Co. SVPs Jim Carpenter and Ken Szady, based in the firm's Chicago office represented CalTIA with assistance from Eastdil Secured in Los Angeles.
Carpenter tells GlobeSt.com that the TA Associates portion of the transaction closed over the last weekend in June in three separate transactions involving different TA funds. He declined to confirm the sale price, which one local industry source pegged at $204 million. TA Associates, which handled the acquisition out of its Newport Beach office, did not return a phone calls seeking comment.
"There have been a lot of big portfolios that have come out onto the market in the last year or so and some have sold and some have not," Carpenter says. "Everyone has done their billion-dollar deal and now the quality of the real estate is seeming to matter more and more."
"The ones that have not sold are grab bags where someone throws a bunch of properties together and hopes somebody buys it. (The CalTIA portfolio) was consistent in quality of market and quality of real estate; that's what drove this to be as successful as it was."
Looking ahead, Carpenter says there are a couple of more big portfolio sales rumored to be in the works but with so many having already occurred and people being more picky, the ideal size is down a little bit. "The exceptions are acquisitions like Blackstone buying CarrAmerica, which is a public-to-private-type deal," says Carpenter. "There are still some big ones like that that will happen, but in terms of pure portfolio sales, these may be 'The Last of the Mohicans.'"
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