Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust Inc, a firm which specializes in acquiring, developing, leasing, managing, owning, financing and renovating assets which produce income such as neighborhood centers, strip centers, community centers, and free-standing retail properties, yesterday made the announcement that it had bought the Twin City Crossing shopping center for a cost of around $4.5 million.
Twin City Crossing is situated in Batesburg-Leesville in South Carolina, which is located around 30 miles southwest of Columbia. With Twin City Crossing, Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust has now expanded its geographic footprint to cover five states: Florida, Virginia, South Carolina, Oklahoma and North Carolina. The property is fully leased until April 2014, and is the second acquisition that the firm has made with the proceeds of its initial public offering (IPO) that was completed just last month.
"Twin City Crossing fits Wheeler's acquisition criteria perfectly as a grocery-anchored shopping center with a stable tenant base in a community driven, tertiary market," says the chairman and chief executive officer of Wheeler Real Estate Investment Trust Inc, Jon S Wheeler. "We acquired the property at a significant discount to its estimated replacement cost, favorable capitalization rate, and expect it to be immediately accretive to our net operating income." Wheeler notes that the company was especially pleased to have a secure and well known anchor tenant in Bi-Lo Grocery, whose rent covers around 168% of the debt service on the whole property.
Wheeler goes on to say that the company is confident that Twin City Crossing, together with its previous purchase of a free-standing property in Grove in Oklahoma, are great first steps toward the execution of its business strategy.
