The story behind the sale
Scott Seal of Lee & Associates CRE — Orange, CA represented the Seller (the Soares Family Trust) in the sale of this ±6,315 SF freestanding industrial/flex building on a ±21,249 SF hard corner lot — first time on market in 50+ years.
Achieve the highest price and terms on an asset that, on its face, worked against itself — a single owner-user occupant, years of the seller's accumulated scrap, junk, and inoperable equipment throughout the building, and a hard-corner location directly adjacent to the City of Anaheim's trash headquarters.
The central challenge was vision. An owner-user has to picture their own operation running in the space — difficult when the doors are padlocked, deferred maintenance is on display, and 20+ years of owner-user occupancy shows in every angle of the facility.
Every tour became a question of not just price, but “how will the seller vacate on time?” We needed not only the right buyer to see the property's unique value, but one willing to flex with the seller on a leaseback. Drawing on years of experience marketing industrial property in the Anaheim Canyon submarket, we removed the barriers for buyers: professional aerial photography, detailed site plans with accurate dimensions, and complete tour availability — clearing the calendar for every showing and revisit, and arriving ahead of each appointment to open the building and let it show at its best. We also confirmed and marketed the legal square footage of the property's uniquely large upstairs warehouse mezzanine — presented not as a price addition, but as added value the right user could put to work.
Early interest was cautious — buyers hesitated at the price relative to the deferred maintenance. We repositioned the pricing in line with the market and, leveraging long-standing relationships across the brokerage community, brought the right operator to the table.
On the next round of tours the fit was unmistakable: a user who could finally see their business in the space — and one willing to work with the seller on terms. We negotiated a very favorable leaseback for the seller, quickly removed contingencies, and extended the close of escrow to give the seller the runway to vacate. We closed at $3,300,000 — an ideal outcome for both sides. Mark Jerue of Lee & Associates | Irvine represented the buyer — a landscape and maintenance company that will dispatch out of this facility. Mark and his team did excellent work.
