Rexford Industrial Buying Blackstone Industrial Assets In Combined $1 Billion Investment

By Amit Chowdhry • Mar 29, 2024

Rexford Industrial Realty – a real estate investment trust focused on creating value by investing in and operating industrial properties located throughout infill Southern California, and Blackstone, announced Rexford Industrial acquired approximately 3 million square feet of industrial properties under separate transactions with Blackstone Real Estate, including the Blackstone Property Partners strategy and Blackstone Real Estate Partners and Blackstone Real Estate Income Trust, for an aggregate purchase price of $1 billion.

The combined portfolio comprises 48 properties, totaling 3,008,000 square feet, acquired for $1 billion or $332 per square foot on average. And the combined portfolio is 98% leased, with 99% of the property square footage located within core, infill submarkets in Los Angeles and Orange counties. The investments are expected to generate a weighted average initial unlevered cash yield of 4.7% and an anticipated stabilized unlevered cash yield of 5.6%. These investments were funded using proceeds from Rexford Industrial’s recent exchangeable senior note offerings and cash.

KEY QUOTES:

“These strategic investments in exceptionally well-located, high-quality assets within infill Southern California, the nation’s highest-barrier and lowest supply industrial market, represent a significant opportunity to drive accretive cash flow growth, increased operating margins and long-term value creation. With these transactions, we are pleased to further our Blackstone relationship, and look forward to identifying opportunities for future collaboration. Looking forward, our total pipeline comprises approximately $300 million of investments under contract or accepted offer, bringing the aggregate year-to-date $1.4 billion of investments completed or in the pipeline, to a weighted average 5.0% anticipated initial unlevered cash yield and anticipated 5.7% stabilized unlevered cash yield.”

– Howard Schwimmer and Michael Frankel, Co-Chief Executive Officers of Rexford Industrial

“These transactions represent an excellent outcome for our investors and demonstrate the strong institutional demand for high-quality assets in attractive markets like Southern California, where we own over 50 million square feet of warehouses. Logistics continues to experience near record low vacancy and remains a high conviction theme for Blackstone Real Estate globally; we are proud owners of $175 billion of warehouses around the world. Along with our portfolio company Link Logistics, we are pleased to work with Rexford on these transactions, who will be an excellent steward of these properties going forward.”

– David Levine, Co-Head of Americas Acquisitions for Blackstone Real Estate