TA Realty Sells Austin Industrial Portfolio for $107M

By Scott Baltic, Contributing Editor

Tech Ridge 3, courtesy of TA Realty

Austin, Texas—CRE investment management firm Stockbridge Capital Group LLC of San Francisco, has purchased for $107 million the Tech Ridge Portfolio in Austin, Texas, a group of four Class A distribution buildings totaling 1.02 million square feet, it was announced Tuesday by the seller, TA Realty of Boston.

The portfolio reportedly is 100 percent leased to nine national and local tenants, with an average remaining lease term of more than five years.

The Tech Ridge Portfolio is located at 710, 810 and 820 W. Howard Lane in northeast Austin and features, according to the seller, “functional specifications, physical features, aesthetics and locational characteristics that position them at the top tier of industrial properties in the market.”

“TA Realty acquired the asset at a dislocated time for Austin in 2011, but we foresaw a strong comeback in fundamentals, demographics and demand in the marketplace,” Jim Raisides, partner at TA Realty, said in a prepared statement. “We were able to increase occupancy from 64 to 100 percent, while significantly increasing rent, and successfully execute a sale upon value-add completion to a core owner.”

Raisides managed the sale of the portfolio along with Xander Dyer, vice president of Asset Management.

Neither TA Realty nor Stockbridge responded to Commercial Property Executive’s requests for additional information.

The average warehouse vacancy in the Austin MSA is 4.7 percent, reflecting an industrial market that is the tightest it has been this century, according to a third-quarter report from CBRE. And even though 17 projects totaling nearly 1.1 million square feet broke ground in the third quarter, “new supply remains short of demand,” says CBRE.

Unemployment in Austin is just 3.5 percent, well below the state and national averages.