A unit of Blackstone Group LP and Prologis, a real estate Investment Trust, have agreed to purchase a 17 million square feet warehouse portfolio worth $960 million, according to several media reports.
While 80 percent of the warehouse portfolio is owned by Lehman Brothers Holdings, 20 percent is owned by Prologis itself. The acquisition deal is expected to be completed by the third quarter of 2013.
Blackstone's subsidiary, IndCor Properties Inc, will hold bulk stake in the warehouses and will be operating about 9.5 million square feet of the centers in Reno, Nevada. The rest of the warehouse spaces will be taken over by Prologis, most of which are located in Las Vegas and Pennsylvania, reports Bloomberg.
With the acquisition of this portfolio, Blackstone will become one of the largest warehouse owners of the U.S. News of this deal just comes after Blackstone announced that it purchased 4 million square feet of warehouses from First Potomac REIT for around $241.5 million. Recently, it also purchased 15 warehouses in Chicaho for $110 million.
Meanwhile, in a recent CBRE Report, the most expensive warehousing markets were analyzed. It was found that rents were the highest in the Asia Pacific region. Only one American market had made its way into the list.
Given the retail market in the Asian and the Pacific region is growing, Blackstone will be investing extensively in these areas. According to the Wall Street Journal, the firm is planning to raise funds worth more than $4 billion to invest in China and other Asian countries. Though the exact amount of the fund is not known, the sum will be twice the value of what Blackstone had initially planned to raise.
"This is the era of Asian-consumption led global growth. From a region wanting to be an economic superpower, Asia has become one. It now rivals the US in terms of global economic and trade influence," Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group said to BBC.
