Blackstone's Link Logistics Spends Another $175M On Bay State Warehouse Portfolio
Blackstone affiliate Link Logistics Real Estate is doubling down on warehouses, buying a six-property portfolio for $175M just weeks after another major purchase in the Bay State.
Link Logistics purchased the industrial assets spread across Eastern Massachusetts from AEW Capital Management, CBRE, which arranged the sale on behalf of AEW, said in a statement. The six properties are 100% leased to eight tenants and span 802K SF.
“The team at AEW Capital Management was successful in identifying the underlying market trends years ago, aggregating a scalable portfolio, and capitalizing on what is an extremely aggressive and liquid capital markets environment presently in Boston,” CBRE Executive Vice President Chris Skeffington said in a statement.
Representatives for Link Logistics and AEW didn’t respond to requests for comment Wednesday morning.
The six properties are 12 Forge Parkway in Franklin; 150 Dascomb Road in Andover; 25 Industrial Way in Wilmington; 65 Sunnyslope Ave. in Tewksbury; 82 South St. in Hopkinton; and 19 Technology Drive in Auburn.
The 12 Forge Parkway warehouse, a 237K SF property partially owned by GFI Partners, sold for the highest individual price at $49.5M, according to Norfolk County property records. GFI Partners sold a combined 32.32% interest in the warehouse, according to public records. A GFI Partners representative didn't immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday.
The six properties’ tenants are paying rents 36.2% below market value, according to CBRE, and have a weighted average remaining lease term of 6.31 years. Meanwhile, skyrocketing industrial growth has pushed average asking rents to $11.94 per SF, a 10% to 15% increase in the past 12 months, according to Hunneman's research.
The portfolio acquisition comes weeks after Link Logistics spent $154M for two TA Realty warehouses in Central Massachusetts, two sites spanning 600K SF leased to e-commerce giant Amazon. The Blackstone industrial affiliate counts a portfolio of more than 429M SF of industrial space nationwide and touts a 14.1M SF development pipeline.
CORRECTION, OCT. 27, 9:30 P.M ET: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the value of the deal in the headline. The headline has been updated.
