Preferred Apartment Communities Inc. acquired seven grocery-anchored shopping centers through its wholly-owned subsidiary, New Market Properties LLC, from Hines Real Estate Investment Trust Inc. The centers total 650,400 rentable square feet and traded for for $158 million, about $243 per square foot.

Purchased Grocery-Anchored Portfolio

Center	Market	SqFt
Shoppes at Parkland	Parkland, Florida	145,720
Cherokee Plaza	Atlanta, Georgia	102,864
University Palms Shopping Center	Oviedo, Florida	99,172
Thompson Bridge Commons	Gainesville, Georgia	92,587
Sandy Plains Exchange	Marietta, Georgia	72,784
Heritage Station	Wake Forest, North Carolina	68,641
Oak Park Village	San Antonio, Texas	64,287

^{Source: Hines REIT}

The deal marks New Market’s initial expansion into both North Carolina and South Florida markets.

“This is a transformative transaction for us in that we now own 30 grocery-anchored centers across seven states,” said Joel T. Murphy, president and CEO of New Market Properties.

Nationwide Life Insurance Co. and Keybank financed the acquisitions providing a $97.7 million in first mortgage loans with the balance paid from Preferred Apartment’s available funds.

Five of the loans from Nationwide have a 10-year term and a fixed 3.45% interest rate. The sixth loan from Nationwide, which finances the Cherokee Plaza asset, is a five-year, floating rate loan at 2.25% over the 30-Day LIBOR rate. The loan from Keybank for the Shoppes at Parkland is a seven-year loan with a fixed rate of 4.67%.

Hines Real Estate Investment Trust divested the properties as part of its approved plan of liquidation and dissolution. Hines also has the option of selling its Champions Village shopping center to New Market Properties separately. If exercised, that sale would close in November.

Champions Village in Houston is the largest of the eight centers at 392,870 square feet. It also has the highest vacancy at 24%. All of the other properties have occupancies of more than 90%.