Prologis Inc., the world’s largest warehouse owner, may sell about $800 million of U.S. properties by the end of 2012 amid growing investor demand for industrial buildings, co-chief executive officer Hamid Moghadam said.
“It’s more of a seller’s market than a buyer’s market in the U.S.,” Moghadam said in a telephone interview. “We’re just pushing the timetable.”
Prologis this year has already disposed of about $470 million of property in the Americas that it either owns or is in funds it manages. The $800 million in planned sales would be in addition to those transactions, Moghadam said. Prologis is selling properties in smaller markets and areas less important to global trade.
Prologis sold the International Corporate Park in Doral for about $47 million in May. It owns the Prologis MIA Logistics Center in the Airport West area of Miami-Dade, and the Prologis Miami Industrial Business Park in Doral.
It has 190,000 feet of buildings under construction in Miami-Dade’s Beacon Lakes development.
Investment funds have been active buyers of industrial real estate this year. Blackstone Group LP, based in New York, last month reached an agreement for control of Walton Street Capital LLC assets valued at about $2.1 billion, one day before $2.45 billion of debt on the industrial properties was due.
“The stuff that we’re selling is clearly not in the best markets, and within the better markets it’s certainly not the best assets,” Moghadam said. “We’re not selling anything that we weren’t going to sell anyway.”
Source: DBR