MacRo LTD Blog

A MacRo Bird’s Eye View: Frederick’s 2012 Commercial Real Estate Market

A big picture of Frederick County’s commercial market, including the top deals of 2012.

Frederick Commercial Real Estate Market

MacRo’s “Top 5 Commercial Real Estate Sales” blog posts are among our most popular with readers.

We decided to do a little something different for the 2012 commercial real estate sales recap.  We love data, statistics, and charts here at MacRo, so we gathered a fairly comprehensive list of the commercial real estate sales recorded in Frederick County for 2012, and sorted them by market segment.

This is an exercise we plan to repeat each January, as a method of tracking trends in Frederick’s commercial real estate market.  In the meantime, what do the numbers reveal in our inaugural year?

Based on the raw data we examined, about $200 million worth of commercial real estate changed hands in Frederick in 2012.

The market sector with the highest number of transactions yielded almost the lowest dollar volume in sales: mixed residential/commercial properties.  There are the small residential-sized mixed-use buildings lining the streets of Frederick City’s historic downtown and the county’s “main street” municipalities such as  the Golden Mile, New Market, Middletown, and Thurmont.

Office and warehouse sales and leasing are the lifeblood of the commercial real estate market here in Frederick, much like everywhere else.

We learned that the Holiday Inn at FSK Mall and the Holiday Inn Express were foreclosed on this past year.  (Were we the last to know about this?)

And of course we ranked the sales to share MacRo’s list of the top 5 commercial real estate sales in Frederick for 2012:

1) $20,910,000            Hilton Garden Inn – 7226 Corporate Court

Hospitality properties were hit very hard by the recession, as evidenced by the foreclosure of Frederick’s own Holiday Inns.  Investors are shedding these properties, and bargain hunters have been snatching them up in anticipation of improved revenues as the economy begins to build some steam.  RAA Management purchased this hotel from LTD Management Company in July.   The hotel is 80,000 SF in size and has 143 rooms ($261.38/SF; $146,244/room).

2) $16,511,000            PNC Bank Building – 110 Thomas Johnson Drive

Greenfield Partners purchased this office building in a portfolio sale worth $161,900,000 from Corporate Office Properties Trust in July.  The building is 122,491 SF in size ($134.79/SF).

3)  $14,642,486           Tranquility at Fredericktown – 6441 Jefferson Pike

Tranquility at Fredericktown was sold twice this past year.  In June of 2012, it was sold to investor/developer Russell Horman for $8,403,079.  He promptly flipped the property in December in a portfolio sale worth $85,100,000 to Capital Health Group.

4)  $9,600,000             Brooklawn Apartments – 1001 Carroll Parkway

Multifamily properties continued to be hot with commercial investors this year, so it’s no surprise that an apartment building made Frederick’s top 5 in 2012. ZOM, Inc., a real estate investment firm in Florida, sold Brooklawn to an investor in Massachusetts in December.  The building is 113,285 SF and has 86 units ($84.74/SF).

5)  $7,150,000             Frederick Brick Works – 184 East South  Street

Frederick Brick Works, Inc. purchased this property in October.  The property consists of a 13,362 SF industrial warehouse building situated on 25 acres of land zoned MU1 ($535.10/SF).

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The author: Rocky Mackintosh, President, MacRo, Ltd., a Land and Commercial Real Estate firm based in Frederick, Maryland. He also writes for TheTentacle.com.

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