By Keith Loria, Contributing Editor<\/i><\/p>\n
Lone Star Funds, a global private equity firm, has acquired State Farm\u2019s 23 existing operations centers consisting of 6.2 million square feet in 16 states, through a sale-leaseback agreement.<\/p>\n
The sales price was not disclosed and the locations of the centers were described only as \u201cassets in 18 markets located from coast-to-coast.\u201d State Farm was represented by Transwestern in the transaction, while Lone Star Funds represented itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe appeal of the portfolio was you have high-quality assets around the country with a very strong credit tenant with a long history of success,\u201d Brad Cohen, Transwestern\u2019s managing director, told Commercial Property Executive<\/i>. \u201cThe size of this transaction was very appealing as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Gary Nussbaum, Transwestern\u2019s managing director, there\u2019s a large appetite for large portfolios in the market right now and he feels it\u2019s a very sound strategy in today\u2019s market.<\/p>\n
\u201cInvestors want to get a lot of money out and they want to do it all at once, rather than in a number of small deals,\u201d Nussbaum told CPE<\/i>. \u201cBecause of that, there\u2019s a premium in the market right now for large portfolios and that in conjunction with the ability to finance at historically favorable interest rates made it the perfect time for State Farm to put this on the market.\u201d<\/p>\n
The velocity of such deals has picked up over the last 12 months and Cohen added that Transwestern expects to see similar sale-leaseback deals in the future. That\u2019s one of the reasons this deal came together so quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the time that this officially hit the market to the time it actually closed was less than three months,\u201d Cohen concluded. \u201cTo get that done in that period of time takes a tremendous team with the team being the buyer, the seller and the broker.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of the 18 markets in the deal, Nussbaum said they tended to be secondary markets across the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Global private equity firm Lone Star Funds has acquired State Farm\u2019s 23 existing operations centers consisting of 6.2 million square feet in 16 states, through a sale-leaseback agreement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":451,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1589,21783,21742],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1004087287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-houston","category-investment","category-latest"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n