EQT Exeter Real Estate Income Trust Inc. has acquired two industrial properties—one near Harrisburg, Pa., and one in the Nashville, Tenn., area—for a total of more than $245 million. Both assets came online last year and are fully leased under commitments of 10 years or more.
The 1.2 million-plus-square-foot property at 3327 E. Harrisburg Pike in Middletown, Pa., in central Pennsylvania, is within 5 miles of both Harrisburg International Airport and the Norfolk Southern Railway’s Rutherford Intermodal Yard. It sold for more than $170 million and the previous owner appears to have been Core5 Industrial Partners, CommercialEdge information shows.
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The other asset, a 638,000-square-foot warehouse at 1500 Shoals Way in Portland, Tenn., changed hands for $75 million. The seller was Al. Neyer and the tenant is Shoals Technologies Group, according to a first-quarter industrial real estate market report from Lee & Associates. Shoals is a manufacturer of electrical balance of systems components.
EQRT acquired the two properties with proceeds from the sale of 91.2 million Class E units of its operating partnership to EQT Exeter Holdings US, Inc., an affiliate of its sponsor. The deals also involved debt financings, including a $85.3 million loan from New York Life Insurance Co., public records reveal.
Launched last August, the REIT is externally advised by EQT Exeter, the real estate division of EQT AB. EQRT seeks to invest about 80 percent in commercial assets, including industrial of life science properties, and 20 percent in multifamily or self storage assets.
The REIT’s first acquisition, that closed in March, involved a 449,642-square-foot industrial asset at 110 SE Inner Loop in Georgetown, Texas. The seller was Portman Holdings.
Off the radar
Pennsylvania’s I-81/78 corridor is facing a collision between weak tenant demand and new speculative space arriving on the market, according to a July report from Savills. As a result, vacancy in the corridor has risen for seven straight quarters, to 5.6 percent in the Central Pennsylvania submarket.
Fortunately, the quantity of space under construction is down from one year ago and currently totals 4.5 million square feet in the region. Savills forecasts that owners of properties over 1 million square feet will start to divide such spaces into smaller blocks if they can’t find sole tenants.