EQT exits 10.5 million square feet of Southeast logistics to LBA

EQT Real Estate has closed the sale of a 46-building logistics portfolio totaling roughly 10.5 million square feet across the Southeast to an affiliate of LBA Realty, IREI reported on Aug. 27, and the seller is EQT Real Estate Industrial Value Fund V, the firm's value-add industrial vehicle. The sale lands days after EQT agreed to buy a $1.2 billion industrial portfolio of above-market rents and renewal risk from Rexford Industrial, as PWD reported.

The Class A buildings average about 230,000 square feet and support third-party logistics, regional distribution, and advanced manufacturing uses across 10 markets in the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, and Alabama — Charlotte, Greensboro, Greenville-Spartanburg, Atlanta, Savannah, Tampa, Orlando, Jacksonville, Birmingham, and Huntsville. IREI attributes the portfolio's appeal to population growth in each market, based on the latest Census Bureau estimates, and to the region's freight links — the Port of Savannah, JAXPORT, Inland Port Greer, and the I-85, I-95, I-75, I-20, and I-4 corridors.

That purchase covers 60% of Rexford's $2 billion realignment, so in a single week EQT Real Estate has taken on a rent-reset book and sold a stabilized Southeast logistics portfolio. That pairing is a stress test of the industrial bid at two risk points.

LBA Realty, a private West Coast real estate firm, is taking down 46 buildings across 10 markets — portfolio scale that once would have circulated among the largest institutions. EQT, for its part, is trading the certainty of in-place logistics income for the rollover risk embedded in the Rexford book, a bet that re-leasing upside will repay the purchase.

That re-leasing bet is the one to watch as the sector's freight flows shift, and a sponsor can sell 10.5 million feet of Southeast logistics into private hands days after buying industrial product on different terms. EQT Real Estate is raising industrial capital on the core-plus side as well — PSERS committed $100 million to an EQT Exeter industrial fund the same week.