Lightstone has acquired a five-building, 652,647-square-foot industrial portfolio in Charlotte, N.C., and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. The seller was LM Real Estate Partners, which owns about 4 million square feet of industrial space.
The deal represents a near-term opportunity for the buyer to lease the space at higher rents than what tenants are currently paying. The portfolio is 82.1 percent leased to 12 tenants that have 3.6 years of weighted average lease term, and current rents about 27 percent below market. There is also an immediate lease-up opportunity of 116,000 square feet in the portfolio.
JLL Capital Markets represented the seller in the deal, with Senior Managing Director Pete Pittroff, Director Michael Scarnato, Senior Director Dave Andrews and Analyst Michael Lewis leading the effort.
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Working on behalf of the new owner, JLL also secured a fixed-rate, seven-year acquisition loan through Voya Investment Management. The company’s debt advisory team, including Senior Managing Director Peter Rotchford and Managing Director Taylor Allison, worked on that aspect of the deal.
New York-based Lightstone has a broad portfolio of real estate, including 231 properties totaling over 15 million square feet of industrial, life science space and other commercial properties, as well as more than 25,000 residential units and 5,100 hotel guestrooms.
North Carolina industrial still strong
Though not quite the hot market it was immediately after the pandemic, Raleigh-Durham industrial is still strong, with vacancy marketwide coming at 6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2024, up 50 basis points from a year earlier, CBRE reported. Rent growth remained positive in 2024, up 4.6 percent year-over-year.
New industrial deliveries totaled 1.4 million square feet in Raleigh-Durham in the fourth quarter, with 65 percent of that total leased ahead of completion, CBRE noted. At the end of the year, 2.1 million square feet of industrial was underway in the region, the lowest level since the fourth quarter of 2020.
Charlotte industrial is likewise relatively strong, with vacancy at 8.4 percent as of the end of 2024, still relatively low historically speaking, CBRE said. About 6 million square feet of industrial space was underway at the end of the year, a drop of 17.8 percent compared with the end of 2023.
