Merit Hill Picks Up Another Broward Self-Storage Facility
Merit Hill CEO Elizabeth Schlesinger and the Pines West Storage Center at 400 Northwest 172nd Avenue in Pembroke Pines (Merit Hill, Google Maps, Getty)
South Florida is going through a mini-surge of self-storage deals, with Merit Hill Capital picking up its second Broward facility in less than a month.
An affiliate of Brooklyn-based Merit Hill paid $17 million for Pines West Storage Center at 400 Northwest 172nd Avenue in Pembroke Pines, according to records and Vizzda. The buyer secured a $15.1 million mortgage from Citibank, the deed shows.
The deal for the facility with 326 units breaks down to roughly $52,000 per self-storage unit.
The seller, an entity managed by Richard Collum, president of Pembroke Pines-based Collum Management, bought the 5.6-acre property for $1.1 million in 1996, records show. A year later, Collum completed the four-building complex.
Managed by Extra Space Storage, Pines West offers units ranging in size from five-feet-by-four-feet to 10-feet-by-20-feet, according to the self-storage facility’s website. Monthly rents range from $25 to $451.
Less than four weeks ago, Merit Hill, led by CEO Elizabeth Schlesinger, bought a Davie self-storage facility for $17.5 million. The firm owns 234 self-storage properties spanning 15.6 million square feet in 33 states, including Florida, according to the company’s website.
In the past two years, Merit Hill paid $3.9 million for a self-storage complex managed by CubeSmart in Homestead, and $13.6 million for a four-building self-storage site in Royal Palm Beach, records show.
South Florida has experienced a flurry of self-storage trades in recent weeks. This month, San Francisco-based TPG Real Estate Partners and Miami-based Value Store It acquired a three-story self-storage building in Weston for $18.5 million. In November, Saratoga Springs, New York-based Prime Group Holdings paid $35 million for Riverbend Self-Storage, a four-story building with 886 storage units in Fort Lauderdale.
South Florida saw a 30 percent annual boost in new construction of self-storage in the first half of the year, with more than 4 million square feet of development underway, according to RentCafe.
