“Very few properties trade within the 8A market, where the availability rate is 2.4 percent. So when a deal does come up, it's hotly contested. This was one of just a few sales that took place there over the past year,” Schmidt says.

MONROE, NJ—Investors drove the bidding for Principal Real Estate Investors'26 Englehard Drive into multiple rounds before it was acquired by a Boston-based advisor in a sale arranged by Cushman & Wakefield's Metropolitan Area Capital Markets Group. The 324,540-square-foot industrial building has a unique feature in the NJ Turnpike Exit 8A submarket – a rail line to the building serviced by Conrail.

“There is very strong interest from the institutional community in Exit 8A, and correspondingly a deep investor pool for this property,” says Gary Gabriel, who handled the sale with team members David Bernhaut, Andrew Merin, Kyle Schmidt, Brian Whitmer, Jules Nissim and Jason Goldman on behalf of Principal Real Estate Investors. “We had multiple rounds of competitive bidding.”

A Boston-based advisor purchased 26 Englehard Drive, which has a single tenant with a 10-year lease that includes contractual annual rent steps. Schmidt noted that the rent is below current market rates and NOI is projected to increase significantly over a long-term holding period.

The property, which has 45-by 50-foot column spacing, 170-foot tuck courts and 48 loading positions, is three turns and five minutes from the Exit 8A interchange. It also has 13 rail doors, serviced by Conrail along the Northeast Corridor rail network. “That is a feature rarely found in the Exit 8A submarket,” Schmidt says.

“Very few properties trade within the 8A market, where the availability rate is 2.4 percent. So when a deal does come up, it's hotly contested. This was one of just a few sales that took place there over the past year,” Schmidt says.