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Cushman & Wakefield has arranged the sale of a 243-acre undeveloped parcel in Orlando, where buyer Dalfen Industrial has plans for a 2.8 million-square-foot speculative industrial project.
As the first true bulk development in the city of Orlando, the Class A asset will be able to accommodate users from 500,000 square feet to 1.5 million square feet, and will be economically competitive with other bulk development markets such as nearby Davenport and Lakeland.
The Cushman & Wakefield Industrial Team of Senior Director Jared Bonshire, Senior Director David Perez and Senior Brokerage Coordinator Taylor Zambito represented Dalfen Industrial in acquiring the land from The Brunetti Organization, with additional assistance from the Capital Markets Team of Vice Chairman Mike Davis, Executive Managing Director Rick Brugge and Director Rick Colon. Bonshire, Perez and Zambito will also handle leasing for the asset.
Dalfen Industrial is one of the nation’s largest buyers of industrial real estate and is a leader in the last-mile property sector. Their investment focus is on strategically located urban infill warehouses and distribution buildings. Dalfen Industrial currently owns and operates millions of square feet of premier industrial properties throughout the Unites States and in Canada.
The 243-acre parcel is situated along State Road 417 near the interchange with Lee Vista Boulevard in southeast Orlando. The site falls within Orlando’s Airport/Lake Nona submarket, which is one of the largest and most in-demand industrial submarkets in Central Florida.
“With this project, Dalfen Industrial is satisfying a strong need in Orlando, as there are a limited number of development projects in our market geared toward bulk users,” said Bonshire. “While there are projects of this scale along the I-4 Corridor, in Davenport, Apopka, and Lakeland, this development is the first of its kind for Orlando.”
Added Perez, “For any bulk occupier needing space to access the over 2.5 million people in the Orlando MSA, this is their opportunity.”
Walt Disney World is in conversations with Virgin Trains to add a new station inside the magical property. Virgin Trains currently connects Miami to Palm Beach and is building the final leg to connect South Florida to Orlando. Virgin Trains plans to connect Orlando to Tampa in the coming years.
Virgin Trains, formerly known as Brightline, has been wanting to have a station in Disney since 2018. Back then, documents filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission showed a map that had a Disney station.
Senior Vice President of Virgin Trains Ben Porritt told the local media that the proposed Disney-property station would offer over 140 million people an additional transit option to Central Florida’s most-visited destination, Walt Disney World.
While there’s been no formal confirmation from either party on whether the new station will be built on Disney property, its addition would entice both tourists and South Floridians to visit Central Florida and, in turn, benefit the local economy.
The developer of The Grove Resort & Water Park, one of Orlando’s newest vacation home communities, welcomes the move. The Grove, which sells two- and three-bedroom luxury vacation condos to buyers looking to be five minutes away from Walt Disney World, would see the value of the condos appreciate even faster.
“It would be a brilliant move for Virgin Trains and Disney World to partner up to bring a station to the park,” said Noah Breakstone, CEO of BTI Partners, the developer of The Grove Resort & Water Park. “The station would be a priceless amenity for the millions of tourists who come from South Florida every year. Increasingly, the bond between South Florida and Orlando is growing stronger. We see that every month when South Florida buyers come to The Grove Resort to buy our condo-hotel residences to benefit from the short-term rental program we offer, which offset the cost of ownership. There is a natural synergy between South Florida and Orlando.”
The Grove Resort & Water Park’s turnkey management program is operated by one of the world’s leading hoteliers, Benchmark Resorts & Hotels®. Benchmark takes care of every aspect of owning a residence at this four-star resort. The ample condos – which come with full kitchens, living and dining areas, full-size washer/dryers, and screened patios – provide a good alternative to large families who visit the theme parks and don’t want to stay in a traditional hotel.
With strong tourism, demographics and economic fundamentals, Orlando has emerged as one of the nation’s most attractive destinations for real estate investment. The theme parks have helped attract 75 million tourists last year to the greater Orlando area, up from 72 million in 2017.
Black Salmon, a national commercial real estate investment firm, announced the acquisition of 111 North Orange in Orlando for $67.75 million.
The 245,201-square-foot, ‘Class A’ office building is one of the most sought-after towers in the city’s central business district, according to the release.
Set in downtown Orlando, the 21-story building is ideally surrounded by more than 500,000 square feet of walkable, street level retail, as well as new multifamily development, creating a true live-work-play environment. Ninety-four percent leased, notable tenants include Regions Bank, UBS, Geico, and co-working space provider Regus.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Orlando has led the nation in job growth for the past four years, a testament to its strengthening economy. While the region is often most associated with its robust tourism sector, job growth stemmed primarily from professional and business services, which accounted for more than 20,000 new jobs this year.
Black Salmon’s purchase of 111 North Orange is a significant addition to the company’s portfolio, which includes assets in major markets throughout the U.S., such as the San Francisco Bay Area, Phoenix, and Indianapolis. The firm’s investment strategy continues to focus on acquiring stabilized assets in high growth markets with an educated workforce, robust technology industry, and strong market fundamentals.
“Downtown Orlando has been on our radar since the firm’s inception, and we are so pleased to have identified this rare opportunity to own a landmark office tower in the area,” said Grant Peterson, vice president of acquisitions with Black Salmon. “As we look to 2020, we aim to continue expanding our footprint with similar deals for our select group of investors.”
The expansion of high-speed rail service Brightline, soon to be Virgin Trains, to Orlando’s international airport is expected to further bolster the city’s already booming economy by facilitating new business growth and adding regional transportation options. Orlando is also home to the University of Central Florida (UCF), the largest university in the nation, and the Central Florida Research Park (CFRP), the fourth largest in the country.
On Tuesday, December 10th, CFCAR board members held their annual meeting. At the meeting, the 2020 Leadership election results were announced and toys were collected for the Toys for Tots organization. The toys will be distributed to children whose families cannot afford to buy them gifts for Christmas.
Thank you all so much for a great year!
Happy Holidays!
Orlando Regional Realtor Association Inc. — which represents more than 15,000 people in Central Florida real estate — will move its headquarters after buying nearly 100,000 square feet of mostly vacant office space, setting the stage for the future redevelopment of the site.
The association bought the three-building Orlando Executive Park northwest of Interstate 4 and Lee Road for $9.5 million. The sale has not yet been recorded by the Orange County Property Appraiser. The office space on the 7.2-acre property is currently 92% vacant.
Here's a breakdown of the three buildings in the office park:
The seller, Orlando-based Clayton Investments Ltd., was represented by CBRE’s Ron Rogg and Chip Wooten.
Gary Gagnon of Orlando-based Gagnon Real Estate Investments LLC represented ORRA.
Currently, the association operates its 14,000-square-foot headquarters down the street at 1330 Lee Road. The association acquired that building for $895,000 in December 1999.
"We have no immediate plans for either sites and are working with an architect to design improvements to the [new headquarters] property," COO Amanda Ornelas told Orlando Business Journal. Ornelas declined to say who the architect is.
The property itself may become a future redevelopment opportunity for users including an auto-dealership, hotel and big-box retailer, say local brokers.More than 170,000 cars drive past the site each day, according to CBRE.
It would be the latest parcel ripe for new development in the area:
"I don't know why that growth wouldn't continue to Orlando Executive Park," said Kevin Will, an associate with Orlando-based Foundry Commercial who works in office leasing.
Source: OBJ
A new mixed-use project may soon transform undeveloped land in south Orange County.
Developer Chris Miller — CEO of C. Miller Capital, which has offices in Orlando and Miami — plans to build a hotel, 11 commercial parcels, a 2-acre storage unit, 350 apartments and 150 condos northwest of John Young Parkway and the future Holden Avenue extension, Miller told Orlando Business Journal.
Miller is under contract with entities related to the landowners. The project, called Millenia Place, is subject to city of Orlando approvals.
Those involved with the project so far include Kevin Hipes, Millenia Place's exclusive broker and founder of Orlando-based Hipes Consulting & Brokerage LLC; and Orlando-based AVID Group is the engineer. A general contractor and architect haven't been selected. The project may cost more than $100 million to build — which may create roughly 1,000 construction jobs, based on industry standards. Miller may sell some parcels to developers and may build some of the project himself.
Miller went under contract for the roughly 60 acres around August and plans to buy the land on Dec. 6. Construction may start in mid-2021 and take one year to complete.
"The entire area is bursting at the seams," Miller said.
Meanwhile, Orlando is in the midst of a building boom. The value of commercial construction starts in metro Orlando — when a permit is issued to a general contractor for a new project — grew by 43% year-over-year to $2.6 billion, the most recent data from New York-based Dodge Data & Analytics showed.
And demand for land continues to rise. Some of the biggest Central Florida land sales closed during this past quarter, as total volume topped $1 billion in August. Out-of-town investors who are lured by population growth continue to want more Orlando-area property for new commercial and residential development.
That means more commercial projects are in the works.
“There’s still extreme confidence in Central Florida,” Andy Slowik, director of the land advisory group for Chicago-based Cushman & Wakefield PLC, who keeps track of these transactions in Orange, Seminole, Osceola and Lake counties, previously told Orlando Business Journal. “I definitely anticipate the momentum will continue into 2020.”
CFCAR Leadership joined hundreds of business owners and community leaders to celebrate the expansion of the Joe R. Lee Branch of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida in late November of 2019.
The Fundraising Breakfast was designed to showcase the expanded facility that includes a new gym and other expanded facilities that will allow 100 more children to participate in the award-winning programs offered by this organization and to celebrate 75 years of success in the community.
CFCAR 2019 President Carol Tanner, CCIM, explained that CFCAR is dedicated to the future of Central Florida’s youth and said she was honored to represent CFCAR in donating to this community initiative. CFCAR leadership was invited by fellow CCIM Jennifer Pollock to attend the event.
At the Joe R. Lee Branch, located in the historic community of Eatonville, the center serves roughly 500 young people who need support and focuses on an outcome driven club experience that includes priority outcomes such as 97% of the teens abstaining from smoking and drinking, 99% of the club members advancing to the next grade level and where 96% try to help others when they see them in need.
Adam Neumann’s charisma was almost enough to take WeWork, the shared-office-space company he co-founded, public. But a delayed IPO process marred by investor concerns about his behavior, the company’s governance, and valuation, pushed Neumann to step down as CEO this past week.
The move will partially mollify the company’s critics, but it will do little to change the risk inherent in WeWork’s business model. WeWork’s real estate portfolio is filled with leases that are far longer than what’s typical in the industry. Under its leases, WeWork owes a whopping $47.2 billion, according to the company’s IPO paperwork.
“The average length of the initial term of our U.S. leases is approximately 15 years,” WeWork noted in its IPO filing.
By contrast, from 2006 to 2017, the average term for leases signed by U.S. publicly traded real estate investment trusts was 6.8 years, according to Morgan Stanley.
WeWork’s long leases look particularly problematic when you consider that its client base is seeking shorter, more flexible commitments. The typical WeWork member agreement is on average less than two years, the company’s filing says.
“In many cases, our members may terminate their membership agreements with us at any time upon as little notice as one calendar month,” the company’s IPO filing says.
WeWork declined to comment on the gap between the company’s leases and its customer commitments. The company said in its S-1 filing that its annual revenue run rate was $3.3 billion.
For WeWork, taking on long-term risk is part of the value proposition they offer to both tenants and landlords, the latter seeking certainty and the former seeking flexibility.
WeWork’s most direct competitor, IWG (ticker: IWG.LN), which operates the Regus brand of coworking spaces, manages the same risk in several ways.
First, it’s more geographically diverse than WeWork, with office locations in over 1,000 cities globally. That leaves them less exposed to the regional or national economic swings than WeWork, which has locations in 111 cities. Second, IWG simply has a lower level of lease of total lease obligations than WeWork at £6.6 billion, or about $8.4 billion, according to the company’s 2018 annual report. And third, IWG signs shorter leases: 62% of its lease obligations are due within the next five years.
IWG has good reason to be relatively prudent: after the dot-com bubble burst, its U.S. business filed for bankruptcy.
WeWork’s landlords are, of course, aware of its risk. And they’ve been increasingly asking for WeWork to guarantee larger portions of the long-term leases that the company signs. Columbia Property Trust (CXP) and SL Green (SLG) both discussed guarantees they sought and received from WeWork on conference calls last year, The Wall Street Journal reported.
To make its revenue more predictable, WeWork has expanded its enterprise business, which now accounts for 40% of its membership base. Those customers come with relatively longer contracts and penalties if they are broken. WeWork also says in its filing that its revenue will rise in coming years as newly opened locations mature, which could reduce the gap between its assets and liabilities.
Neumann may be out as CEO, but the need to get potential investors’ comfortable with WeWork’s risk hasn’t changed. The task will likely be high on the priority list of the company’s new co-CEOs Artie Minson and Sebastian Gunningham.
On Thursday night, the Financial Times reported that WeWork has stopped signing new leases with landlords in an effort to reduce costs.
The company denies that report.
On Friday the company told Barron’s: “WeWork continues to sign new lease agreements with our landlord partners. We expect the pace of entering new lease agreements to slow over the next several quarters as we pursue more strategic growth and focus on accelerating our path to profitability.”
Source: Barron's
In May of 2019, RPR announced a strategic partnership with CREXi, a commercial real estate listings portal, community and marketplace.
Today, the RPR-CREXi listings partnership goes live, which will offer REALTORS® and RPR users access to more than 84K for sale properties, 180K spaces for lease, and 50K historical sale/off-market properties. These listings will be searchable in RPR nationwide, making RPR’s commercial inventory more robust than ever before.
Together, CREXi and RPR enable NAR’s commercial members to streamline, manage and grow their business. This data integration between RPR and CREXi will allow commercial practitioners to manage their for-sale and for-lease properties in a more streamlined fashion. Bottom line: it will simplify transactions and boost business for all commercial users.
Watch the video below to learn more about the RPR-CREXi partnership.
Another big advantage for REALTORS® is an exclusive 35% discount to join CREXi Pro, a premium version of CREXi that includes more features and has the potential to increase property marketing efforts.
Source: RPR
Orlando is the fifth-fastest-growing flexible office space market in the U.S. according to a new report from CBRE. The market’s flexible-space inventory grew to 485,000 sq. ft. by Q2 2019, up 180,000 sq. ft., or approximately 59 percent from a year earlier.
Flexible space now accounts for 1.2 percent of Orlando’s total office inventory, up from 0.7 percent a year ago. The ratio comes in below the U.S. average of 1.8 percent, indicating there is room for even further growth in this sector.
In the past year, two new-to-market flexible-space operators established operations in Orlando, adding nearly 100,000 sq. ft. to the total inventory. Today, there are 15 flexible-space operators spanning 27 locations, most of which are highly concentrated in Orlando’s Downtown/CBD submarket (56.5 percent).
“Flexible office space is a growing, viable solution for remote workers, entrepreneurs, and startups here in Orlando,” said Jim Gray, Managing Director at CBRE. “As Orlando’s tech sector continues to expand, demand for flexible office space is highly likely to grow as well.”
National Trends
CBRE outlines several growth scenarios for the flexible office space sector, which currently occupies a cumulative 71 million sq. ft., or 1.8 percent of the office space in 40 U.S. markets. CBRE’s baseline forecast calls for flexible office space to expand to approximately 13 percent of office space by 2030, reaching up to 600 million sq. ft. Even in a low-growth scenario, CBRE sees flexible office space claiming up to 6.5 percent of the market by 2030.
Fueling that growth is demand from small businesses and enterprise users alike that favor the flexibility of office accommodations on relatively short-term leases, allowing them to expand or contract their space according to the needs of their business. Additionally, the flexible office space category has room to grow in every U.S. market. Even markets where flexible office space is well established – such as San Francisco at 4 percent of its office market and Manhattan at 3.6 percent – aren’t as penetrated as major international markets like London and Shanghai, both at 6 percent.
“We’re seeing a fundamental change in the expectations that organizations and their employees have for the workplace. This change is spurring an increasing number of companies to engage with flexible office solutions that provide the physical environment and business terms they prefer. This shift is ongoing,” said Julie Whelan, CBRE’s Americas Head of Occupier Research. “There are some very bold predictions in the marketplace – with some calling for flexible space accounting for as much as 30 percent of office space in the future. There is simply not enough available office space to support this supply without even more drastic changes in tenant behavior.”
CBRE believes flexible space can account for as much as 22 percent of office space by 2030 under the most aggressive flex-space adoption scenario.
CBRE’s analysis found the majority of flexible-space supply in the U.S. concentrated in top markets, many of them tech hubs. Several of those markets also registered the fastest growth rates in the past year.
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