LOS ANGELES-CBRE has been exclusively retained by Clarion Partners to market a four-property industrial portfolio totaling approximately 2.6 million square feet.

The properties, located in California's Inland Empire, Dallas, Texas and Memphis, Tennessee, are class-A+, single-tenant, bulk industrial buildings that are referred to as the “Tier 1 Core Logistics Portfolio.”

The properties boast long-term tenant leases and claim good rail, road and airport transportation access. The new construction buildings (2002 to 2008) include 28-foot to 32-foot clear heights, truck court depths ranging from 120 feet to 200 feet, parking and dock doors.

Tenants include Michelin, which occupies the 801,581-square-foot Interchange Business Center in the Inland Empire, a California district embracing Riverside and the San Gabriel Valley; Navistar, located at 3737 W. Miller Rd. in Dallas/Fort Worth; Exel, Inc., which occupies 491 Wingo Rd. in Memphis; and Siemens, which is located at the Airways Distribution Center, also in Memphis.

Jack Fraker and Josh McArtor of CBRE are marketing the properties with the national partners team, local market experts, vice chairman/managing director Darla Longo and Val Achtemeier of CBRE's Debt & Equity Finance Group.

Fraker, the vice chairman with CBRE's Investment Properties Institutional Group, tells GlobeSt.com that two factors are big drivers for the industrial space: e-commerce, which he says “gets so much publicity because it's easy to talk about,” and the single-family housing recovery, which tends to fly under the radar.

“Every house has furniture, a refrigerator, microwaves, fans, carpets – everything that goes into a house at some point in time is stored inside of a warehouse,” Fraker says. “That's just as much of a driver for industrial real estate.”

Clarion's sale is “part of an overall strategic asset management plan,” Fraker says. “They are a major owner of class-A industrial real estate properties across the country and try to balance it out amongst geographies.”

As to why the existing tenants aren't buying, “many of them would prefer to keep their cash and invest in their core businesses,” Fraker says. “They have greater returns in tires or whatever. If it's a distribution operation, the vast majority of tenants lease.”

Fraker says there's no asking price on the leasing terms, but he “expects fairly aggressive pricing because the properties are so new. And the other thing is there's more capital that wants to be invested in industrial real estate than there are properties for sale.”

Interested investors must submit a letter of intent which includes proposed pricing, a description of the approval process, due diligence and closing timing and earnest money deposit. The seller and CBRE will select interviewees based on the submissions.

As reported earlier in GlobeSt.com, NAIOP's I.con: The Industrial Conference will have a CIO Roundtable that discusses where the sector is headed.