The investor whose group bought eight warehouses around Jacksonville in December intends to invest about $1 million to upgrade them – and to continue looking for more area properties to buy.
“The buildings are in good shape,” said Anthony Brady, president of Somerset Properties of Pennsylvania.
“They need some landscaping, painting, exterior lighting and new pavement and fencing. That is what we are focusing on,” he said Jan. 15.
“Our model is to fix them up, raise the rents a little – and we think we can do that with these properties.”
Somerset, based in Lower Gwynedd, Pennsylvania, bought the eight warehouses among six deeds for almost $28.2 million through SPI/CSIM JIP Property Owner LLC.
The deeds and a $19.25 million mortgage from Webster Bank of Waterbury, Connecticut, were executed Dec. 24 and recorded Dec. 31 with the Duval County Clerk of Courts.
The properties are in South and West Jacksonville.
The South Jacksonville properties are at 9855 Florida Mining Drive, Buildings 1 and 2; 5748, 5867 and 5885 Mining Terrace; and 3010 Powers Ave.
The West Jacksonville properties are at 600 Suemac Road and 5875 Highway Ave.
Property records show they total 380,500 square feet of space and were built from 1974 to 2008.
Brady said the buildings are fully leased and Somerset has renewed four tenants.
“We hope to buy a lot more properties in the Jacksonville market,” Brady said. He is interested in office, industrial and flexible-use properties.
Somerset already has a presence in Jacksonville. It bought the three-building Capital Plaza office park at 10401 Deerwood Park Blvd. N. in July 2019. It also owns property in Fort Lauderdale and is under an agreement to buy a single-story flex building in Orlando.
The company says it is a full-service real estate company that operates in the Eastern U.S.
“We have been buying a lot in the Southeastern U.S. the past several years. Florida obviously is a very desirable state for all of the reasons that you read and hear,” he said, referring to what economic developers tout as the climate, available land, population growth and low taxes compared with other areas.
Brady said the latest Jacksonville purchase doesn’t comprise the “typical big-box distribution centers.”
“These are service centers that are serving the growing population,” he said.
Brady said the tenants range from 7,500 to 44,000 square feet, and average about 16,000 square feet.
Those spaces attract tenants that sell and store supplies for homes and cars, for example.
“A lot of people moving into Jacksonville means there are more houses. People are fixing up their houses, and a lot of supplies are needed for that,” Brady said.
“A lot of these tenants are tenants that sell supplies – goods that people are putting into their houses, or tires for their cars.”
He said with growth in Jacksonville, it will be more difficult to find property to build such multitenant warehouses “this close to the city.”
Brady said the Somerset group generally holds properties for five-10 years.
“We are not long-term holders anymore,” he said.
“You fix them up, create the value and go on to the next deal.”
