Albertsons-backed Safeway sells at asking for $7.7M

The single-tenant net-lease market is quiet by design, and the Safeway at 28810 Military Road S. in Federal Way, Washington, is a working example of why. Connect CRE reported that Barber Family Properties LLC, a California-based investor, paid just over $7.7 million for the property, meeting the asking price set by LSD Enterprises LLC, which had held the asset since 2018. Colliers senior vice president Ryan Marn and vice chair El Warner represented the seller.

The store itself is a one-story grocery box built in 1972, spanning roughly 25,766 square feet on 2.8 acres with 140 parking spaces and renovated in 2010, but the income stream is what matters: a corporate-backed lease from Albertsons Companies that runs through 2037, giving the buyer more than a decade of credit-backed rent. At about $300 per square foot, the price reflects that lease far more than the real estate; this is a bond trade with a building attached in Federal Way, near Dash Point State Park. The 2.8-acre footprint adds land value behind the box, though the 2037 lease means any repositioning is a late-2030s question, not a near-term play.

None of this moves the national market, yet it is exactly the kind of small, quiet trade the retail recovery is being built on; as this publication has argued, retail demand returns as new supply stays scarce. With ground-up construction muted and vacancies stable, corporate-tenanted retail is underwriting like fixed income: long-duration, low-growth, priced for certainty rather than appreciation. Private capital is paying for Albertsons' credit, the necessity of food retail, and the scarcity of new supply. The seller bought in 2018, collected rent for eight years, and exited without a discount; the buyer is patient, holding a long lease on a necessity retailer plus 2.8 acres of optionality that pays off only near the lease's 2037 end.

The seller got its asking price. In the single-tenant grocery net-lease segment, buyers and sellers have converged on value more than in most other property types right now.