“There’s more demand than there is product” was a refrain often heard throughout the net lease market during 2010. At least for high-quality assets, most agree that demand from investors outstripped supply of for-sale properties on the market. As a result, those top assets saw strong competition and pricing in 2010, a year characterized by Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services managing director Al Pontius as “a very active, high-demand market.”

Indeed, for the past two years, investors like Inland Real Estate Acquisitions Inc. president G. Joseph Cosenza found themselves looking through more properties than usual in order to weed out the choice deals. The reason? According to Cosenza, it was because lesser-quality properties flooded the marketplace.

Among the single-tenant assets the Oak Brook, IL-based executive did buy for various Inland investment entities last year was the Time Warner Cable Division headquarters in East Syracuse, NY. A 102,924-square-foot office building in which the tenant consolidated several business units along with a difficult-to-duplicate 2.4-acre satellite dish farm, the $18.1-million property had all the hallmarks of a solid net-lease deal. In addition to favorable market rent and price-per-square-foot comparables, says Cosenza, the deal’s attractions also included a long-term lease and a tenant with “impeccable” credit and a net worth of $9 billion.