OXNARD, CA—Loja Real Estate LLC, an affiliate of the Loja Group, has acquired a Vallarta Supermarket-anchored shopping center for $20 million from Oxnard Vineyard LLC, GlobeSt.com reports exclusively. The 102,711-square-foot shopping center was 98% leased at the time of the sale. Loja Real Estate purchased the center with cash.

The grocer will serve the highly Hispanic demographic in the area, which helped to attract the buyer to the property. “The buyers are making a push to add Hispanic grocery-anchored retail to their portfolio because the Hispanic population has such a strong buying power,” Brad Baskin, a broker with Orbell Investment Group of BRC Advisors Inc., tells GlobeSt.com. “In 2010, Hispanic buying power was estimated to be $1 trillion. Now, Hispanic buying power is estimated to climb to $1.5 trillion by 2015. That is a 50% increase in five years, which is astronomical.” Baskin and Orbell Investment Group brokers Orbell Ovaness and Artin Sepanian represented the buyer and the seller in the transaction.

The seller purchased the property several years ago out of bankruptcy for upwards of $8 million. Formerly anchored by a Home Depot, the property's only remaining tenant was a Jack in the Box. Oxnard Vineyard invested capital to renovate the building and lease-up to a new tenant mix that would better serve the community. “The seller is a developer by trade, so they are in the game of adding value and then selling off the asset,” Ovaness tells GlobeSt.com. “There was a substantial amount of equity built up in the property because the seller was able to renovate the property, lease to new tenants and get market rents.”

The property was sold off market. “We were able to secure an all-cash buyer in one to two weeks,” says Ovaness, while Baskin adds that the center had no offers other than the buyer because “When someone wants to sell a property on an off-market basis, they typically don't want a lot of people to know about it.” The property is now leased to Vallarta Supermarket, which occupies 64,000 square feet, a Fallas Discount Store, which occupies 24,000 square feet, and a mix of smaller retail shops, including a Jack in the Box, which occupies the remainder of the square footage.

Hispanic grocers have become popular for shopping centers in certain markets. The recently opened Juanita Tate Marketplace, for example, was preleased to a Northgate Market, another Hispanic grocer chain.