Market Pushes Up Price of Sun Valley Building

An older industrial building has traded hands in Sun Valley for one of the highest prices in the area, according to Lee & Associates-LA North/Ventura. The 19,000-square-foot building, built in 1975, sold to Chris Malcolm of Van Nuys through a limited liability entity named 1614 Schrader Apartments for $4.4 million, or nearly $232 a square foot, according to CoStar Group Inc. That is 46 percent higher than the $159-a-square-foot median price of industrial buildings that sold over the recent second quarter, according to Lee & Associates. The per-square-foot sale price is also an almost 52 percent gain for the seller, Chris Caramella, over what he paid for the property when he bought it in 2007 for $2.9 million, or $153 a square foot. Lee & Associates’ brokers Hunter Warner and Brett Warner negotiated the deal on behalf of the buyer and the seller and said the market’s tight, 1.3 percent vacancy and 12 percent year-over-year surge in rental rates to 85 cents per square foot average generated multiple offers as business owners scramble to avoid the increases and buy buildings instead. The median price for industrial buildings sold last quarter is up 10 percent compared to the same, year-ago period, according to Lee & Associates. “A company looking to lease industrial space in this market today has one or two choices at most in its preferred submarket,” Warner explained in a statement, “and rents are rising very rapidly for those spaces. That has pumped up the demand to buy properties even more, and there are even fewer buildings for sale. We knew that the limited supply would drive the price of the building, and it did.” However, other recent sales have not garnered similarly high prices. In June, a 13,300-square-foot industrial building at 7129 Vineland Ave. in North Hollywood, built in 1954, sold for $1.9 million, or about $143 a square foot, according to CoStar.