Florida

LAKE MARY, FLA. — Parmenter Realty Partners has received $84 million in financing to partially fund the company’s acquisition of Primera Towers I–V, a five-building office park in Lake Mary. The 772,000-square-foot park is located at 605, 610 and 615 Crescent Executive Court and 255 and 300 Primera Blvd. just north of Orlando. Holliday Fenoglio Fowler (HFF) arranged the financing. Primera Towers is 89 percent leased to tenants like Blue Cross & Blue Shield, Liberty Mutual, Paylocity, D+H, Dixon Ticonderoga and HNTB. The park features on-site fitness centers and a café with patio seating. The suburban mid-rise buildings were developed between 1997 and 2000 immediately east of Interstate 4. HFF’s Ed Coco and Matt Casey worked on behalf of Parmenter Realty Partners investment fund and an institutional equity partner to secure the funds through JPMorgan Chase Bank NA. Parmenter acquired Primera Towers for $130 million. The seller was a joint venture between Banyan Street Capital, Oaktree Capital Management and Balandis AG. Mike Davis, Michael Lerner and Rick Brugge of Cushman & Wakefield represented the JV in the sales transaction. This sale was the first time in the park’s history that ownership has ever been consolidated. Parmenter plans to expand the …

FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail

Orlando likely resides in the minds of children and children at heart as “The Happiest Place on Earth,” and those involved in its industrial market today couldn’t agree more. Over the past five years, the Central Florida industrial market has been transformed from its prior position as a spoke in the wheel of distribution to the hub. To service consumers located in the country’s third most populous state, companies are locating large distribution centers in Central Florida (hub) with smaller distribution centers in Tampa, South Florida and Jacksonville (spokes). From a distribution standpoint, Central Florida has become the statewide distribution center for Florida. Warehouse is the New Retail The world of e-commerce began with the birth of the internet in the early 90s, made a big milestone with the first secure online transaction in 1994, and today Amazon is no longer first thought of as a rainforest in South America. In fact, Amazon is so prolific that recent reports from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimate that Amazon Prime now reaches nearly half of U.S. households. That translates to 54 million people, just in the United States, who have paid $99 for an annual membership that enables each consumer access to …

FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail

The Orlando office market is strong and continues to grow stronger. Vacancy rates are declining, rents are increasing and new developments are in the works. While many large office markets around the country seem to have reached or are approaching the peak of this real estate cycle, the market in the Orlando area still has great potential for expansion. According to the Orlando Economic Development Commission (EDC), there is currently an unprecedented level of office, multifamily and mixed-use development planned for downtown Orlando. This is largely thanks to Tremont Plaza, a 28-story mixed-use development being built by Lincoln Property Co. and Tremont Realty Capital. The $81 million development will have seven floors of office space totaling over 200,000 square feet, along with a 180-room hotel, making it the first large-scale Class A office project for Orlando in 10 years. With several other major multi-use commercial projects on the drawing board, the EDC calculates that more than 1 million additional square feet of construction is planned for Orlando’s downtown business district. There are several factors contributing to the office market’s prosperity, including Florida’s improving economy and business-friendly atmosphere. The state offers a favorable business tax structure, pro-business legislature and access to …

FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail

To those outside Orlando, the Central Florida metro of just over 2.3 million residents has long been a vacation destination with its major theme parks and top attractions including Walt Disney World, Universal Orlando, SeaWorld and the I-Drive corridor, home to the new Orlando Eye. In fact, Orlando welcomed over 66 million visitors who spent more than $60 billion in 2015, a new all-time local and U.S. travel industry high. However, tourism is just one piece of the puzzle when it comes to Orlando’s emergence as a top target for multifamily investment. The metro is experiencing exceptional growth across multiple sectors of the economy, and in 2015, the Orlando MSA led the nation in employment gains, coming in at 4.6 percent. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the metro added 52,200 new jobs. Of these new jobs, the highest percentage was in professional business services, medical, transportation and general services. Looking forward, data from CBRE-Econometric Advisors projects that Orlando will lead the U.S. in employment growth over the next five years by a wide margin (2.3 percent compared to 0.8 percent for the nation overall). The rapid employment growth driven by numerous corporate relocations and expansions including Verizon, Mitsubishi-Hitachi, …

FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail

Broward County’s office market continues to heat up like the South Florida summer. Vacancy is decreasing while office rental rates in the market increase. Broward County added 32,100 jobs in the past year, the 4 percent nonagricultural employment growth leading to a second quarter unemployment rate of 4.2 percent, outpacing the state (4.5 percent) and national (5.0) averages. “Many factors drive Broward County’s strong economy, including a talented and diverse workforce, our proximity to Latin America and the Caribbean, and access to three international airports and three seaports,” says Bob Swindell, president and CEO of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance, the county’s public/private partnership for economic development. Broward County’s office sector performance is a big story in an area of very positive commercial real estate headlines. It can be argued that South Florida trails only the two Bay Area bellwethers, San Francisco and the Silicon Valley, in property performance nationwide. Office rental rates in the county — CoStar reported that the market’s average rate increased 1.4 percent during first quarter to $25.14 per square foot — are most likely reaching the top of the arc in the present economic cycle. “Some of our strongest job growth has been in high-wage …

FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail

Miami’s four major office submarkets — Brickell, Downtown, Coral Gables, and Airport West Dade — are enjoying record growth in Class A asking rental rates, an emerging trend that is further strengthening the city’s positioning as a highly desirable market for local, national and foreign investors. In the city’s Brickell/Downtown business district, Class A office rents have skyrocketed more than an average of 14 percent per square foot during the past year — a significant difference from the historic average annual increases of 2 to 3 percent per square foot. In fact, the disparity in Class A and B rents in the urban core, where Class A rents range from 40 to 70 percent higher per square foot than Class B rents, is much greater than in submarkets, where Class A rents are approximately 24 percent higher than Class B rents. This creates further incentive for Class B buildings in the urban core to raise asking rental rates and stay apace with Class A, making it a strong business case for investors who are looking for a long-term play with maximum ROI. The rent growth is attributed to several factors. While we have seen strong net absorption by local companies …

FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail

Miami is coming into its own as an increasingly international city that continues to attract new residents, visitors and investment and development activity. The city’s urban core is flourishing, with residents gravitating toward a downtown area that allows them to live, work and play in the same neighborhood. The Miami retail market is experiencing a development surge to accommodate the city’s growth. Through the end of the first quarter of 2016, about 2.3 million square feet of retail space was under construction, according to CoStar. The developments are bringing a new class of retailers to the market. Major projects include Brickell City Centre, a 500,000-square-foot shopping center with a roster of tenants that includes Armani Collezioni, anchor tenant Saks Fifth Avenue and Valentino. North of downtown Miami, the $1.7 billion Miami Worldcenter project will introduce a high-street retail concept that is similar to the popular Lincoln Road open-air mall in Miami Beach. In Miami’s Design District, the $1 billion redevelopment of the neighborhood is attracting luxury retailers like Hermès, Louis Vuitton and Cartier. Downtown residents will have easy access to all of these retail destinations. Retail operating fundamentals remain strong in the Miami market. Vacancies closed the first quarter of …

FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail

Given a handful of macro-factors in the Miami industrial market including the Panama Canal expansion nearing completion, PortMiami expansion, strong American dollar, and improving relations with Cuba coupled with the country’s new mega-port project, it is a unique time to be an industrial real estate service provider. To succeed in this environment, it takes deep local knowledge and a global understanding of how Miami, the Caribbean and Latin American economies and infrastructure are intertwined into global commerce. The first macro-factor is the Panama Canal expansion, its first major renovation since the 1914 opening. The expansion is set to have a major impact on global trade; specifically, the way cargo will be handled and transported throughout the Western Hemisphere. The larger canal will accommodate the new line of Post-Panamax vessels — supertankers, container and passenger ships too large to previously pass through the canal. Miami is a prime location for these vessels and offers a tremendous expansion opportunity for the local industrial market provided the vessels have a port to dock. In response to the Panama Canal expansion, PortMiami completed a deep dredge project to allow the Post-Panamax vessels full access, which is the second macro-factor affecting Miami’s industrial market. The …

FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail

SANFORD, FLA. — Demolition work has commenced on Flea World, the one-time home of “the nation’s largest flea market under one roof,” in Sanford approximately 25 miles north of Orlando. The 118-acre site is being cleared to make way for Reagan Center, a mixed-use project that could eventually include as much as 2.4 million square feet of offices, restaurants, retail stores, apartments and townhomes. The property is situated on U.S. Route 17 at Ronald Reagan Boulevard and County Home Road. The 34-year-old flea market space is situated directly across from the Seminole County Government Operations Center, the courthouse and Seminole State College. Reagan Center’s construction will kick off a 20-year effort by the municipalities of Seminole County, Sanford, Lake Mary, Winter Springs, Longwood and Casselberry to create an economic development corridor along Route 17. “Reagan Center will create employment opportunities for thousands of Central Floridians over the next decade and will be a major economic engine,” says Paul Partyka, partner at NAI Realvest in Orlando and the broker of record for the $300 million development. “Because of its location, size and economic impact, Reagan Center will rank as one of Florida’s benchmark development projects.” Hastings Homes is carrying out the …

FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail
The Four at Deerwood Jacksonville

The Jacksonville multifamily market continues to enjoy strong fundamentals at levels not seen since before the recession. In fact, the last 18 to 24 months have seen a major record-setting environment. Jacksonville saw new records being set across the board from all asset classes in all submarkets. Class A and value-add assets continue to see cap rate compression and consequently we have new benchmarks for highest price per unit and price per square foot. In 2014, Jacksonville reached nearly $800 million in sales — accounting for more than 12,000 units (includes transactions exceeding $1 million). Based on the year-to-date transactional volume — $735 million with multiple large deals set to close by the end of the year — it’s safe to say that we will exceed last year’s amount. This is the highest sales volume for multifamily in Jacksonville in the last decade. The apartment market has experienced a steady improvement in fundamentals during the past 12 to 15 months. Effective rent increased 2.6 percent from $905 in the first quarter to $928 in the second quarter, which resulted in an annual growth rate of 5 percent. According to CBRE Econometric Advisors’ (CBRE EA) second quarter report, the forecast for …

FacebookTwitterLinkedinEmail