COMMERCIAL
Tustin’s Navien America Inc. is taking advantage of a still tepid real estate market by buying a local industrial building, instead of looking for one to rent.
The company, part of South Korean heating and air conditioner maker KyungDong Navien Co., recently closed the sale for a 135,777-square-foot industrial building in Irvine, at 20 Goodyear.
The warehouse, near Bake Parkway in the Irvine Spectrum, traded hands for $11.6 million, or about $85 per square foot.
It’s at least the seventh industrial building in Orange County to trade hands for more than $10 million so far this year. In 2009, there were only five such deals reported here for the entire year.
Most of the buildings trading hands in the past six months have been snapped up by business owners lured by discounted prices and improved financing options.
Navien America, which makes tankless water heaters and combination space heaters, said it will use 20 Goodyear as its U.S. headquarters. It previously been based in Tustin.
The Goodyear property, built in 1983, is last reported to have traded hands in 2003, when it sold for $8.7 million, or about $64 per square foot.
David Kluver and Nick Carey, from the Newport Beach office of Santa Ana-based Grubb & Ellis Co., represented the owner in the sale, listed as Irvine-based Goodyear Investment LLC.
Hak Chung of Los Angeles-based the Heger Co. represented Navien America.
The building previously was owned by an affiliate of Rays Apparel Inc., an Irvine-based clothing maker for Ocean Pacific, Split, Old Navy and Jimmy Z, among others.
Rays closed in 2008 after becoming unprofitable in the downturn. Santa Ana-based Life Distribution LLC, an upstart clothing company, since has acquired a few Rays brands.
Life Distribution is one of a handful of local companies that acquires the rights to brands and then designs and markets clothes under their names. Rays did the same thing.
Tuscon Buy
A unit of Irvine’s Thompson National Properties is under contract to pick up a shopping center in Tuscon, Ariz.
TNP Strategic Retail Trust Inc., a non-traded real estate investment trust that Thompson runs, said it is looking to buy the Northgate Plaza Shopping Center, a 103,500-square-foot center in Tuscon that’s anchored by a Wal-Mart.
The purchase price is expected to be about $8.1 million, or about $78 per square foot. The deal, set to close soon, includes the assumption of a $4.4 million loan. The seller is Crestline Investments LLC.
The TNP trust has raised nearly $13 million from investors through early June.
Irvine’s SunCal Cos. is in the news again—but this time it’s for growth plans.
RESIDENTIAL
The master developer, which has made headlines the past few years as some of its larger projects have fallen into bankruptcy, now is on the prowl for land deals.
SunCal said it recently closed on $8.3 million of acquisitions involving housing developments in the Chicago and Stockton areas, totalling 734 lots. The company said it also is under contract to purchase more than 3,000 partially developed lots in Arizona and California.
The company teamed up with El Segundo-based investment group Roanoke Group on the Chicago and Stockton transactions. The lots previously were owned by defunct builder Kimball Hill Homes.
The company’s plans are to complete these developments when the market stabilizes and sell the lots to merchant homebuilders, according to Casey Tischer, SunCal’s vice president of land acquisitions.
Similar deals SunCal’s made of late have proved to be profitable.
The Wall Street Journal reported late last month that SunCal and New York financier D.E. Shaw & Co. bought 1,700 lots in Las Vegas for about $28 million late last year, or $16,400 a lot.
About eight months after the acquisition, the venture sold the land to builders including KB Home, Lennar Corp. and Ryland Homes, part of the Ryland Group, for $35,000 to $40,000 a lot, the paper reported.
SunCal said it still is looking for other deals throughout Phoenix, Las Vegas, California, Chicago, Florida and the mid-Atlantic regions.
Brandywine Building
Irvine’s Brandywine Homes recently closed on a 2.5-acre lot in Garden Grove near The Block at Orange, where it plans to build 20 single-family homes.
Brandywine bought the land—near the intersection of Trask Avenue and Fairview Street—from six sellers, including the city of Garden Grove, for an undisclosed sum.
The company plans to begin construction on the development, named Pomelo, this summer. The first homes should be available in the second quarter of 2011.
