The Challenge

Anatolia Capital Corp. was looking to purchase high-exposure industrial lands surrounding the Golden Horseshoe with the intent to quickly develop an industrial park. Although swathes of agricultural and recently-designated-but-unserviced lands have been carefully acquired with plans for the medium- and longer-term, much of the low-hanging fruit within the GTA core have already been taken. As a result of the expertise and activity of Lee & Associates Toronto's Land Services group across the Greater Toronto Area, they were tasked with uncovering and qualifying any suitable opportunities.

Our Approach

Lee & Associates Toronto's Land Services group sought off-market, industrial zoned, mid-sized land parcels in close proximity to major highways across the Greater Toronto Area. Following an extensive search with our real estate intelligence team, we identified a site which already had plans to develop up to 750,000 square feet – with construction slated for early 2023.

We determined trending market sales in the area and underwrote an intensive development pipeline survey encompassing the surrounding Hamilton, Burlington, and Niagara area, and determined the limited supply forecast for the area in 2023. Our analysis concluded the subject lands offered a competitive advantage over many of the other sites given the readiness and existing services already in place for development, allowing it to capitalize on a robust leasing demand environment.

The Challenge

During the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown, more consumers turned to ordering online which spurred massive growth in the eCommerce sector, leading more businesses to turn to 3PLs like Smart Warehousing to help meet the growing demand. With more businesses asking for help, Smart Warehousing needed more warehouses and more space to accommodate the growth. Finding properties in markets across the country that fit the needs of Smart Warehousing was a true challenge. Before leasing a property, it would need to be checked to see if it would be a good fit and would check all the necessary boxes to be an efficient and operational warehouse for Smart Warehousing. Looking for good warehousing space requires not only all the brick-and-mortar checks like clearance height, cross-docks, and proximity to highways, but also whether the right people are near that location to serve their customers. With properties only lasting a few days on the market, Smart needed assistance finding the properties and getting negotiations and paperwork started to not lose out on the property.

Our Approach

To help aid Smart Warehousing in their expansion efforts, the team used our resources to help get potential properties reviewed to ensure they met the detailed requirements needed to be a functional property. With the immediate need for space from Smart, we knew we would need to broker aggressive market rate deals to enable Smart’s growth.  Along with negotiating contracts and leases for Smart, we knew we would have to expedite deals, settling contracts in days to help Smart deliver space to their customers.

The Challenge

Elion began their west coast expansion in 2020. Elion set out to identify core markets and then began looking for industrial investment properties, with the goal of uncovering value-add opportunities. San Diego was quickly identified as a hotspot for industrial real estate investment potential, but not without many barriers that would need to be overcome. Due to San Diego being severely land-constrained, development is limited to the repositioning of infill properties and nearly no new ground-up development. With supply at a maximum and demand that continues to grow, San Diego proves to be a core market with significant barriers to entry that make acquisitions challenging to identify and even more difficult to “shake loose”.

While Elion was aggressively searching for an upside, so was everybody else. Finding an off-market deal in a highly competitive market was a tough requirement, but not impossible with the right knowledge, relationships and experience.

Our Approach

In order to best assist this client, Greg Pieratt, SIOR took a three-part approach. First, he utilized his deep relationships in the local market to cast a wide net searching for potential properties. Next, Pieratt leveraged the reputation he has established for himself in San Diego county, locally representing one of the world’s largest logistics companies. He was able to further capitalize on the privileged exposure to off-market deals that comes from his many interactions with local brokers while doing industrial deals for his large logistics client. Finally, Pieratt tapped the Lee & Associates network of brokers- collaborating with Lee & Associates North County brokers Rusty Williams, SIOR, Chris Roth, SIOR, Jake Rubendall, Isaac Little, and Marko Dragovic.

The Challenge

In 2018, Billy Snowden identified an 11-acre property listed with a residential agent who was unaware of the property’s potential value as an industrial development. Billy recognized that Cabot Properties had recently completed a successful speculative distribution facility within the I-20 West Atlanta submarket and identified them as a logical buyer. As suspected, Cabot showed interest and pursued the property. While under due diligence, it was determined that a swap of land with the neighbor was necessary to improve the site’s efficiency, which Lee facilitated. Upon closing on the site, Cabot engaged the Lee & Associates team of Billy Snowden and Michael Sutter to oversee the marketing of the property.

Our Approach

The Lee Atlanta team created a branding strategy to market the new construction. With custom-branded marketing collateral, Lee Atlanta began to implement its plan by sending e-blasts, posting the new listing information on the largest commercial real estate data aggregator, creating drone videos of construction progress. The team also conducted tours once the construction was underway. The building’s construction was completed in February 2020. In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic put a stop to in-person tours and meetings regarding the facility. However, it didn’t take long for the e-commerce industry to start “feeling the strain” of the need to expand their facilities. Activity in the e-commerce sector increased dramatically, and more and more potential tenants viewed the drone photography and the videos of the building.

The Challenge

At the time of sale, the site was encumbered by a vacant 1,050,266 square foot warehouse building that was previously occupied by the U.S. General Services Administration. The facility was built for the GSA in the early 1990's. The main challenge was figuring out how the investment community was approaching the purchase of the building and site, and how we could maximize pricing based on that. Investors fell into two (2) categories: (1) knock the building down and construct new Class A modern warehouse/distribution product on the site; (2) lease the current facility to a new tenant and construct one (1) new building on the excess land located on site.

Our Approach

The buyer, which was a joint venture between Clarion Partners and MRP Industrial, decided that the way to maximize the value of the site was to knock the 1.0 million square foot building down and construct brand new, modern distribution space on the site. The capital markets team was able to procure the highest $/FAR pricing in the history of the Southern New Jersey industrial submarket, based on the buyer's initial estimates regarding the amount of square feet they would be able to build on the site.

The Challenge

After launching the marketing and sales effort of this asset in late 2019 and running a typical bidding process, we selected a buyer and went under contract in February 2020. Then, COVID-19 hit the US causing the most abrupt and major economic recession since the 2008 financial crisis. Unfortunately, the buyer had not completed its due diligence prior to the national "shutdown" that ensued, and ended up canceling the sale contract in March 2020. After a 90-day hiccup, the same buyer came back to the table and began conducting its due diligence. During due diligence, the buyer ran into significant challenges, namely from his preferred equity and debt sources, who had significantly tightened their grip on new investments and lending criteria in a post-COVID environment.

Our Approach

Given the immense challenge presented to the market in COVID-19, the Lee & Associates team remained nimble, working through the hourly/daily informational updates relating to COVID-19, and "shutdown" orders that were enforced at the state, and ultimately national, levels. Meanwhile, the tenant that occupies 100% of the Property, Thermo-Tech Premium Windows and Doors which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Harvey Industries (Waltham, MA), showed tremendous fiscal and operational health post-COVID. Without this, the likelihood of closing this transaction at the agreed upon terms was extremely unlikely.

The Challenge

The 6th & 3rd project is the second North Loop/Warehouse District (Minneapolis, MN) transaction in nine months for our client, CEDARst Companies ("CEDAR"), a prominent multi-family developer based in Chicago, Illinois. The 6th & 3rd properties are located one block from CEDAR's first project, "The Duffey Lofts" site which land acquisition closed in July 2019, providing an excellent opportunity for CEDAR to scale its operation in the Twin Cities by more than 3.0x. The acquisition of the 6th & 3rd properties did not occur without headwinds. Primarily, the spread of COVID-19 into the US in February/March of 2020 and the economic shutdown and recession that ensued, posed a major challenge to the transaction. As a result of COVID-19, lenders across the nation turned off the spigot for making new loan commercial real estate loans. Additionally, private and institutional equity sources were rattled creating a "cash-is-king" mindset, not knowing if, and how long, an economic decline would last.

Our Approach

Lee & Associates provided ongoing brokerage and transactional support to CEDAR in a variety of ways. The Team was successful in raising equity capital and relational support to multiple local/regional lenders who, through the Team's local market knowledge and expertise, were still actively pursuing new loan financings despite the economic disruption caused by COVID-19. Due to state-to-state travel bans leading up to closing the 6th & 3rd, it proved critical to have local boots on the ground to allow for social-distanced contact with the seller, City and neighborhood leaders, investors, third parties conducting due diligence, and other points of contact necessary as part of the transaction.

The Challenge

The main challenge was driving the pricing to the highest achievable level that was acceptable to ownership while also balancing ownership's timeline for closing as well as the buyer community's timeline for closing. Ownership had done a lot of background work after originally purchasing the site, as they took the site through the township approval process (approximately 1 year time frame) in order to maximize their pricing when they wanted to sell the parcels. The marketing of the site was done in conjunction with ownership obtaining final approvals/entitlements from the township in order to construct a 300,700 SF modern warehouse/distribution facility, meaning that certain milestones still had to be achieved while the site was being marketed so that the Capital Markets team could push the buyer's pricing to the upper echelon of what was achievable based on other recent sales in the market.

Our Approach

Lee & Associates of Eastern Pennsylvania's Capital Markets team was tasked by Foxdale Properties with selling a land site consisting of two (2) parcels that they owned in Florence Township, NJ. Ownership took the land through the entitlement/approval process with the township prior to selling, where they received final & unappealable approvals for the construction of a 300,700 SF, Class A industrial warehouse facility.

The team's approach consisted of contacting every major industrial developer on the East Coast in order to effectively market the opportunity. Interest in the opportunity was extremely strong, as the site's premier infill location combined with its last mile delivery capabilities and immediate development potential in a rapidly growing submarket attracted a top group of bidders that included various public REIT's and private equity developers.

The Challenge

The subject property was never on the market for sale and had significant deferred maintenance. In-place rental rates were well below market and a majority of the tenants had been in the project for 10+ years. The original owner had owned the building for 30+ years and had never been tested with a significant offer. The property had great bones, an ideal corner location of a busy intersection in an up and coming market, as well as freeway signage along Highway 78.

Our Approach

We approached the listing broker with an unsolicited offer from the client. We were able to help underwrite the deal by providing market knowledge and pro-forma analyses then secured the deal for a below-market price of $6,885,000. Upon acquisition, the client implemented an aggressive value-add strategy that included various capital improvements and rent raises during lease-up. After completion of improvements, we began a detailed 8-week marketing campaign that identified all of the highlights of the property in order to attract the largest possible pool of institutional and private investors. In order to generate the most activity possible, we formulated a plan that utilized various marketing channels including our proprietary database of over 2,500 investors, a list of several thousand southern California brokers, as well as specialized listing services such as Real Capital Markets.