DALLAS -- Seller representative Mehran Foroughi told CSP Daily News that the portfolio of a dozen 7-Eleven stores that has been sold to several buyers for a combined value of more than $20 million will retain the 7-Eleven brand in what are essentially sale-leaseback arrangements. "Their intention is not to leave, their intention was just to unload this property as a landlord," he said of the Dallas-based retail giant.
As reported in a CSP Daily News Flash yesterday, the 12 locations in Nevada, Texas and Virginia were acquired from 7-Eleven Inc. through [image-nocss] all-cash deals. 7-Eleven did not respond to a request for comment.
Foroughi, senior vice president in Colliers International's Irvine, Calif., office, told GlobeSt.com that five stores in the Dallas metropolitan area were sold to a California buyer. The six stores in Virginia were claimed by three individual buyers and the lone store in Las Vegas ended up in the portfolio of a Dallas-based company, he added.
"These were extremely hot properties, and we received a number of offers on them," said Foroughi, who partnered with Sam Nakhleh, vice president of Colliers Vancouver office, to represent 7-Eleven. "We didn't have these on the market for very long until they went under contract."
Foroughi said there is a great deal of demand for single-tenant, triple-net-lease assets like the ones that were just sold. The credibility of 7-Eleven tenants helped fuel the interest in the portfolio, he said.
Furthermore, "these assets were in good locations and had strong co-tenants," he said. "Three of these in the Dallas area had Auto Zone as a co-tenant." But even with the assets that didn't have national credit tenants, "they'd been with the property for such a long time, people regarded them as stabilized tenants," Foroughi said.
Most of the strip centers have at least two tenants, and in some cases three tenants. "These are properties that they have owned for 30, 40 years, and these are properties that are anchored by a 7-Eleven, but typically they have one or two more tenants with them. So it was more like a strip center. So a combination of it being a strip center, and the fact that they had it for a long, long time, it did make sense for them to unload some of these properties," Foroughi told CSP Daily News.
Some stores are franchisees, some are corporate, he added.
For the Virginia properties, the buyers were individuals who wanted to invest in something; people with other professions, he said.
The properties sold quickly, said Foroughi. One individual wanted to buy them all, but he was too late, as some deals had already been made. One of the Virginia buyers owns another strip center with a 7-Eleven as one the tenants. Westwood Financial, Los Angeles, which owns 100 properties throughout the United States including other shopping centers in Texas, bought all five Texas stores.
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