A complex of four warehouses that total about 115,000 square feet of warehouse space on Jacksonville’s Westside has sold for $2.2 million, according to the broker that represented the seller.
Monte Merritt, a senior director of real estate services for Franklin Street, said all space has been leased in the warehouses at 6721 Stuart Ave.
The 3601 Corp. bought the complex in 2011 for $700,000. The two about 45,000-square-foot buildings on the two-acre lot were built in 1974 and the two other buildings were built in 1989.
Jacksonville-based Easton Sanderson Co. purchased the property Friday.
Merritt said the sale is indicative of a heating-up industrial market in Jacksonville. Multifamily and retail have been hot for the past two or three years, he said, and office has made significant progress over the past 18 months, but industrial has been sluggish with lease rates just recently surging past $4 per square foot to near $4.40 in some submarkets, he said.
“The industrial market is certainly the last market to move,” he said.
However, with the vacancy rate standing at 6.1 percent at the end of the first quarter, he said, it could be soon that Jacksonville could see more speculative industrial space.
“I feel that at 6 percent [vacancy] we will start to see increases in rents leading to speculative building,” Merritt said.
