COMMERCIAL
San Clemente’s Argus Realty Investors LP, Orange County’s second-largest tenant-in-common investor,which pools investors together to buy offices and other properties,is being taken over by the founder of the area’s largest tenant-in-common investor.
Irvine’s Thompson National Properties LLC, whose founder and Chief Executive Tony Thompson also started up Santa Ana’s real estate investor Triple Net Properties LLC (now part of Grubb & Ellis Co.), announced early this month it will start managing Argus’ existing portfolio, as well as introduce it to new investment opportunities.
Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but it’s likely to be Thompson National’s largest transaction since the real estate investment company started up less than a year ago.
Argus counts about 9 million square feet of assets under management. It has acquired more than $1.5 billion of properties since it was formed in 2001 and says it has about 1,200 investors.
Its most prominent acquisition was the $153 million buy of the Wachovia Capitol Center building in Raleigh, N.C., in early 2007. The trophy property, leased to the bank and others, set a record sales price for the Raleigh area, according to local reports.
Argus also made big-dollar office deals in the Inland Empire, Phoenix and Atlanta, among other markets. It owns at least one local property, a 100,461-square-foot flex building near John Wayne Airport.
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1340 State College Blvd.: Interceramic signed a seven-year lease |
With the credit markets tightening, Argus had slowed down its deal-making since the Raleigh buy, which looks a lot riskier now amid the current financial crisis. Before this deal with Thompson, Argus hadn’t an-nounced any more acquisitions, or sales, in nearly a year.
Thompson said the transaction is the start of an industry consolidation in the tenant-in-common world.
The deal isn’t unexpected. In July, I wrote a story about how Thompson National was looking to take over for failed sponsors of tenant-in-common investments.
Neither party is calling Argus a failed sponsor, although most of its investments were made at the peak of the commercial real estate market, between 2005 and 2007. The company’s press section highlights several large deals where it “outbid” as many as 50 other buyers for high-profile properties.
Given the current state of the real estate market, “it’s the perfect time to create a relationship that will provide stability,” Argus President Tim Snodgrass said in a statement.
Snodgrass and Richard Gee, Argus’ chief executive, are among some of the former Argus officials joining Thomson National.
Bixby Buying
Irvine-based Bixby Land Co. bought a 452,000-square-foot warehouse in Stockton, about 50 miles east of San Francisco.
The sales price for the building, near a local airport, was $23.9 million, or about $53 per square foot. Sacramento-based Panattoni Development Co. sold the building.
The warehouse was constructed in 1997 as the West Coast headquarters for Exton, Pa.-based Dopaco Inc., a company that designs and manufactures various food packaging items for fast food companies and that is part of Cascades Inc. Dopaco occupies the entire facility on a lease through 2017.
Bixby has bought more than 3 million square feet of office and industrial space since 2006.
The company paid all cash for the building, according to Bill Halford, the real estate investment firm’s chief executive. Bixby might decide to get a loan for some of the property’s purchase price in the future, if the debt market improves, he said.
Tile Mile
Texas’ Interceramic Inc., a distributor of tile and stone products that is part of Mexico-based Internacional de Cer & #225;mica SA de CV, is moving its Anaheim operations to the city’s ceramic tile distribution district, Tile Mile along State College Boulevard.
The company signed a seven-year, 21,000-square-foot lease for showroom and warehouse space at 1340 State College Blvd., on the corner of Winston Road. It had been at 1160 N. Anaheim Blvd.
The total value of the lease was more than $1.8 million, according to brokers with the Anaheim office of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc., which represented the landlord, Irvine-based Sares Regis Group, in the deal. The space, part of a 102,800-square-foot building, had been marketed for lease at $1.09 per square foot.
CB Richard Ellis’ Brad Bierbaum and Ian Britton represented Sares Regis, while Jeff Chiate and Rick Ellison of Cushman & Wakefield Inc.’s Irvine office represented the tenant.
