Mercado at Scottsdale Ranch Sold to Whitestone REIT for $21.25m

VIZZDA—June 20^th, 2013 — John T Rassier of Rassier Properties—a Danville, California-based retail property developer—has completed the sale of The Mercado at Scottsdale Ranch to locally-headquartered Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT), Whitestone. Whitestone paid $10,15m in cash and assumed Rassier’s outstanding $11.1m CMBS debt in care of US Bank as trustee. The $21.25m purchase price reflects $179.65 per square foot and a 30% premium to the prior purchase price of $16,241,259 in August of 2003.

The Mercado at Scottsdale Ranch is a grocer-anchored neighborhood shopping center totaling 118,285 ft² located east of the southeast corner of 96^th Street and Shea Boulevard. The property includes a 29,431 ft² anchor space occupied by A.J.’s Fine Foods, a 12,900 ft² sub-anchor space occupied by Walgreen’s, 64,948 ft² of general inline space and Goldie’s Sports Bar, which occupies a 6,166 ft² 2-story space in the southeast quadrant of the property. The Mercado sits on a 8.594 net acre site, zoned c-2 and was completed in 1992.

Rassier previously acquired the property as Tenant-In-Common (TIC) with two other investors on August 4^th, 2003 for the above mentioned purchase price or $136.30 per square foot. The TIC group paid $7,340,348 in cash and assumed an earlier $9.4m CMBS note with Northland Financial bearing interest of 7.26% per annum, maturing January 1^st, 2028 and stipulated to have a balance $8,860,910. The Tenancy-In-Common interests were consolidated for nominal consideration on July 28^th, 2006 and the property was refinanced with $11.1m in new debt with Goldman Sachs Commercial Mortgage Capital, bearing interest of 5.8% per annum and maturing August 16^th, 2016.

The note was securitized as GS Mortgage Securities Corp II, Series 2006-GG8 and while the property was never noticed for trustee sale, the note had been assigned to LNR Partners as special servicer. For the moment, the note is under the direction of Wells Fargo as Master Servicer and has counted Wells Fargo, Bank of America and—currently—US Bank among its trustees. The outstanding principle balance was not recorded in the assumption agreement between US Bank, Rassier and Whitestone. Whitestone’s Chief Operating Officer, John Dee, was signatory for the acquisition.

By:

Paul Dionne

Director of Analytics

Vizzda.com