After completing more than $400 million in acquisitions last year, Voit Development is selling part of its portfolio in Los Angeles and Orange counties.
The Woodland Hills-based company has put on the market 10 office and industrial properties in Southern California,nine of them in Orange County.
The company is marketing each one separately but asking a combined $86 million for the holdings, which were part of a $125 million package purchased from Fujita Corp. in December.
“These are assets we can’t do anything to create value with,” said Brian Malliet, vice president of acquisitions and development for Voit in Newport Beach. “The leases are long-term, and we can use these to reduce debt on our overall portfolio and to buy more properties in the future.”
The company bought Fujita’s properties mainly to further a strategy emphasizing ownership of multi-tenant office parks.
“Our goal is to become the largest multi-tenant business-park owner in Southern California,” said Malliet.
The Fujita portfolio brought Voit Development’s inventory of multi-tenant parks up to 11. The diversified real estate company owns four business parks in Orange County.
“We have another five under contract to close in May or June,” said Malliet. “Four of those are in Orange County and one is in Los Angeles County.”
Those deals are expected to cost Voit Development about $40 million to complete.
“We like the performance of Southern California’s economy and we plan to continue to invest in local properties,” said Malliet.
Voit’s strategy is to reposition the real estate it buys. But with single-tenant parks, according to Malliet, opportunities to upgrade properties and earn more rental income are limited, compared with multi-tenant facilities.
Last year, the company sold around $170 million of its properties.
“We like to get three times the returns you find in most single-tenant parks,” said Malliet.
The properties being sold are all well-located with strong credit tenants, according to Mitch Zehner of Voit Commercial Brokerage in Anaheim, who is marketing the buildings along with colleague Louis Tomaselli.
“That sounds like a sales pitch, which it is,” said Zehner. “But all of these are in large business-park environments that add to the overall value and impact on the market of each property.”
Three of the buildings are in some of the largest business parks in North Orange County, he added.
Those include facilities in Garden Grove leased to Boise Cascade and Leiner Health Products and one occupied by ITT Industries in Brea.
The other Orange County properties being put on the market by Voit include:
n The Toshiba America building at 2441 Michelle Drive in Tustin, for more than $13 million.
n Two more in Garden Grove: the Raven Industries building at 12151 Monarch St. and the GHN Neon/Everbrite building at 7472 Chapman Ave. The asking price for each is more than $3 million.
n Two Irvine properties, Michelson Plaza at 2400 Michelson Drive and an adjacent site. The first building is being marketed for more than $3 million, while the second’s asking price tops $7.4 million.
n The Performance Contracting building at 1270 Hancock Drive in Anaheim. It is going for $3.3 million. n
