CenterPoint Properties has purchased a Torrance warehouse on two acres for an undisclosed sum.
It’s the Oakbrook, Illinois-based firm’s third acquisition in southern Los Angeles County and 10th in Southern California this year, according to the L.A. Business Journal.
Klabin Co.’s Todd Taugner brokered the deal.
Last month, Centerpoint paid Moishe Mana $63 million for a 173,000-square-foot warehouse in Pico Rivera in the San Gabriel Valley. The deal worked out to $363 per square foot.
CenterPoint’s newest asset in Torrance meanwhile is 52,334 square feet at 2835 Columbia Street, about 12 miles or 25 minutes from the ports of L.A. and Long Beach. It’s next door to another CenterPoint-owned warehouse.
Proximity to the ports is the property’s biggest selling point, as demand for warehousing near the twin facilities is at record levels. CenterPoint also leased a nearby 93,000-square-foot warehouse to marketing and fulfillment company Regan Group.
Demand has surged for industrial properties in the wake of the pandemic as more people bought products online.
The vacancy rate in the industrial sector in L.A. fell to just 1.4 percent in the third quarter. Tenants are scrambling to find space, in turn driving up rents and sale prices.
The average sale price for industrial property in L.A. rose from $226 per square foot in the second quarter to $249 per square foot in the third quarter.
Prologis CFO Tom Olinger said in a recent earnings call that space in the company’s markets “is effectively sold out,” while CEO Hamid Moghadam said tenants were “almost in a panic mode when it comes to committing to real estate.”
Some developers are getting a boost with deals to pre-lease properties still under construction. Duke Realty recently pre-leased a 200,000-square-foot warehouse in the Inland Empire to an e-commerce company based out of China.
[LABJ] — Dennis Lynch