Another Shepherd for Lake Linganore, and Real Estate purchases for CarMax and the Social Security Administration
Many thanks to Wayne Six
of Six and Associates for helping us comb through virtually every real estate transaction in Frederick County during 2011 to develop our “top deals” lists. Six and Associates specializes in residential and commercial real estate property appraisals. Wayne has been appraising land in Frederick County for his entire career, and he knows the Frederick land market inside and out.
We found 5 land deals that topped the $1,000,000 mark in Frederick County last year. Four of those were commercial lots, three were raw land/farm sales and three were sales of improved residential lots. Here are the Top 5 deals in ascending order:
5. $2,062,775
Local developer and philanthropist Marvin Ausherman continued to seek out and acquire good real estate deals for his market niche of commercial office buildings. Under the name of Ausherman Properties he made an investment in June with the purchase of a 7.72 acre commercial lot on Thomas Johnson Drive. Mike Kelly of Frederick Business Properties, Inc. was the seller. According to CoStar, Ausherman plans to develop the site with three commercial office buildings totaling 97,861 SF of space.
4. $2,799,900
Miller & Smith purchased 67 undeveloped lots in Phase II and Phase III in New Market, Maryland from local homebuilder Steve Seawright of Orchard at New Market, LLC in June. Seawright has developed and built out the award winning 95 acre project known as The Meadows at New Market. Miller & Smith is a well establish Maryland/Virginia/Delaware regional homebuilder.
3. $5,800,000
CarMax is coming to Frederick! In July, CarMax purchased a 12.76 acre undeveloped tract of commercial real estate at 5601 Urbana Pike from Richard Kline of Urbana Pike Inc. Some of the Kline family real estate holdings got caught at the intersection of the economic downturn and a financial squeeze which required a few properties be sold. Over the years the family had grand plans for the site, but now in the clutches of CarMax, a 36,000 SF dealership is planned for 2013 or 2014.
2. $8,000,000
A large undeveloped portion of the Lake Linganore planned community, also known by many as the proverbial step-child of previous Board of County Commissioners, was sold after the once again restructured project that fell upon difficult economic times and a massive unsolicited down zoning. The new entity named Oakdale Investment LLC purchased 1,400 acres of residential and commercial lots in Eaglehead at Lake Linganore in a foreclosure sale in May. Linganore Development Group was the previous owner of the project which declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy with nearly $46,000,000 in outstanding debt in 2008.
1. $21,265,000
This deal was so big it made our Top 5 Commercial Real Estate Deals of 2011 list last week. Natelli Communities sold 63 acres of land on Bennett Creek Avenue in Urbana to the Social Security Administration in August. Currently the site is zoned for mixed-use development. The Social Security Administration purchased the site for a new national data facility, construction is planned to begin in this year with an estimated completion date of 2015.
More 2011 Top Five Real Estate Deals to come over the next few weeks … so stay tuned!
The author: Rocky Mackintosh, President, MacRo, Ltd., a Land and Commercial Real Estate firm based in Frederick, Maryland. He also writes for TheTentacle.com.