LOS ANGELES—An unnamed private investor has purchased the Hawthorne Town Center, a 51,000-squqare-foot shopping center, from Primestor Development. The property was marketed to a select group of buyers, and the buyer was ultimately chosen based on certainty of close to meet the seller's yearend deadline.

The property has an interesting history. It was fully market earlier in the year as a retail property with a potential pad building, but when the City of Hawthorne was delayed in approving the entitlements for the additional building, the sale of the property also stalled and taken off the market. The seller had a need to dispose of the asset by the end of the year, so, rather than bringing the property back to market without entitlements, the sales team took the property to a select group of buyers to ensure certainty of close. "We decided to take the property to a select group of people that were aware that the land for the pad building was being transferred with the property, but there was no entitlement on it," Dixie Walker, a broker at Cushman & Wakefield, tells GlobeSt.com. Walker represented the seller in the transaction.

Taking it to the select group gave the sales team a competitive edge and ultimately eliminated risk to the seller. "We basically prequalified a small group of investors and then brought those investors to the table. We picked a buyer out of that finite group that had prequalified, knew the property and could close," says Walker. "It was a business plan on our part to pick a handful of real players and give them everything they need to know about the property. We created a situation where we had hard money in a very short amount of time." The property traded hands for $15.5 million, which, according to Walker, was only reflective of available land since there were no entitlements.