News
SEEKING NJ INDUSTRIAL?
November 28, 2012
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| HFF just put Hartz Mountain’s 283k SF industrial building at 2 Emerson Ln, Secaucus under contract to sell to a data center operator, scheduled to close in Q1. But if you’re shopping for NJ industrial properties, you might not be as lucky. “It’s very difficult to find assets,” says HFF managing director Michael Nachamkin, who will be speaking at Bisnow’s second annual NJ Industrial Summit in Newark on Tuesday (register here). “It’s been tight on the supply side since 2008, and there’s been virtually no construction.” Any dirt that’s been moving has been for build-to-suits, and any developer going forward with spec is doing so with a cautious shovel. |
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| Above is an aerial of 2 Emerson Ln (taken from Santa’s sled on an early test run). Despite there being few assets available, there’s plenty of capital looking, Michael says: on the debt side, there’s an abundance of lenders seeking traditional and value-add plays and money earmarked for spec construction. On the equity side, NJ is one of the top five industrial markets where institutions and funds want to invest. A few months ago, HFF closed one of the largest industrial deals the market has seen in a decade: Cohen Asset Management purchased a nine-building, 2.6M SF Northern NJ port-centric portfolio from affiliates of Avidan Management. There was significant bidder interest for the deal, he says, including private investors, high-net-worth individuals, and REITs. |
