Frederick County Commercial Real Estate Sales Top $600,000,000 for all of 2019!
All it would
have taken was for the last 3 months of last year to clear one hundred million dollars in sales, but, no, with more than a handful of mega deals, that figure was tripled!
Since 2015, annual Frederick County commercial sales transactions have hovered between $300 million and just shy of $400 million. As noted in our November 21, 2019 post entitled County CRE Sales Top $1.6 Billion Since 2015, CRE sales have averaged $85.6 million per quarter … until the period between October 1st and December 31st of last year!
For the last few years, the big question here at MacRo, Ltd. has been when will that $400 million threshold in annual sales be crossed? Well, the CRE community need fear no more after a $308 million closing quarter in 2019!
Yes, CRE sales blew past both the $400 million and the $500 million mark and rested in at $604,124,480.
It is clear that the impact of single transactions that exceed $10 million are no longer a rarity in Frederick County. In 2015, for example, 46% of that year’s $300 million in sales volume exceeded single deals at $10 million or better. Between 2016 and 2018, the average jumped to 62%, but with the aid of last year’s Q4, the new number to beat is 74% of all sales volume that tops the $10 mil mark.
What’s going on, one may ask?
The obvious answer is that while several large multifamily/apartment communities have contributed to the mega-deal phenomena, the end of last year displayed the turnover of large Retail Shopping Centers contributed to the record-breaking year.
While the big talk of the town last quarter was the acquisition by Frederick Health (formerly known as Frederick Memorial Hospital) of the 93-acre former State Farm headquarters campus that included over 300,000 square feet of Class A office and warehouse, that $17,000,000 transaction didn’t even make the top five of the mega deals!
In next week’s post, we will highlight the big five and more, as we look deeper into the impact that Q4-19 had on the year.
Stay tuned!
Rocky Mackintosh, President of MacRo, Ltd., a Land and Commercial Real Estate firm based in Frederick, Maryland, has been an active member of the Frederick community for over four decades. He has served as chairman of the board of Frederick Memorial Hospital and as a member of the Frederick County Charter Board from 2010 to 2012. He currently serves as chairman of the board of Frederick Mutual Insurance Company. Established in 1843, it is one of the longest enduring businesses in Frederick County.