Press Release

JLL Income Property Trust Executes Recent ‘Lease to Core’ Warehouse Investment

May 18, 2021
Photo of a large Distribution Center in Fort Worth

JLL Income Property Trust, an institutionally managed daily NAV REIT (NASDAQ: ZIPTAX; ZIPTMX; ZIPIAX; ZIPIMX) with more than $3.6 billion in portfolio assets and 86 properties, announced today it executed a lease of its recently acquired Fort Worth Distribution Center. The tenant, iDC Logistics, leased the newly constructed, Class A, state-of-the-art warehouse/distribution center totaling 350,000 square feet located in the North Fort Worth/Alliance submarket, one of the top three warehouse markets within the greater Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) Metroplex. The lease is for the entire building, includes annual rent increases of 3 percent, and is for five years until 2026.

Headquartered in Los Angeles, iDC is a leading end-to-end logistics company, providing comprehensive design, implementation, and operational capabilities in freight forwarding, contract logistics, transportation, and distribution management.

“When we acquired Fort Worth Distribution Center in late 2020, we were confident that absorption in the Dallas-Fort Worth industrial markets would continue and allow us to execute a ‘lease-to-core’ strategy for this property,” said Allan Swaringen, President and CEO of JLL Income Property Trust. “Acquiring a vacant warehouse directly from a developer in an off-market transaction is somewhat unique for us,” noted Swaringen, “however, in this case, owning upwards of 1.4 million square feet in this market, along with the strong leasing activity we are executing across our nine million-square-foot, nationally diversified portfolio, we remain bullish on the warehouse markets overall and look to continue to increase our allocation to this property sector. Now fully leased, this investment is accretive to our current portfolio and may also provide a unique opportunity for growth.”

At over 800 million square feet of warehouse space, the DFW industrial market ranks as the fourth largest industrial hub in the U.S. LaSalle’s Research & Strategy group has identified DFW as one of the top performing industrial markets due to robust population and job growth driven by lower taxes and a favorable business climate which supports immigration and corporate relocations. Through year-end 2020, the DFW industrial market had experienced 41 consecutive quarters of positive absorption despite a robust construction pipeline of new warehouses.

Fort Worth Distribution Center’s 36-foot clear height, ample truck courts, newer construction features and excess trailer parking along with its immediate accessibility to essential transportation infrastructure including Interstate 35 and SH-114, the Alliance BNSF and Union Pacific intermodal rail hubs, FedEx Southwest Regional SortHub and Alliance and DFW airports – make it attractive to today’s demanding warehouse tenants.

JLL Income Property Trust’s aggregate industrial allocation is more than $1 billion, or approximately 30 percent of its 86-property, $3.6 billion diversified core real estate portfolio which includes 38 industrial properties in 12 key markets throughout the country.