1031 history pays off in Effingham industrial sale

Forest Bender sold the 110,344-square-foot industrial building at 421 W. Industrial Ave. in Effingham, Illinois, to its seller years ago as part of a 1031 exchange. Connect CRE reports the exit has now closed as an off-market, owner-user deal to a local private entity through Marcus & Millichap. Bender, a managing director in the firm's Indianapolis office, handled the listing, with Steven Weinstock, the Illinois broker of record, and Indianapolis colleagues Jeremie Johnson and Nathan Whalen procuring the buyer.

The building, constructed in 1972 on 5.3 acres, had been vacant with NOVA Solutions, Inc. as its prior tenant, and the seller is Ohio-based; Bender says the relationship predates the listing and the exit produced a strong return for the owners. A 110,344-square-foot vacant building in Effingham does not have a deep bench of plausible users, and an off-market sale means the market was never publicly tested; the years-old exchange work was the effective marketing channel, and Marcus & Millichap got paid for the relationship as much as for the property.

The trade extends a pattern this publication has tracked: small private capital still clearing deals in secondary industrial markets. Connect CRE's report does not state a price, so the next test is whether the repeat-client loop that carried this exit survives the new owner's eventual sale.