Jan. 29--Owner-occupants continue to take advantage of a world with fewer investors.

LC Industries, one of the nation's largest employers of blind workers, is among the latest.

The Durham-based nonprofit paid BPG Properties $6.4 million for a 28-year-old, 140,000-square-foot warehouse at 3211 S. Miami Blvd. in Durham.

LC Industries, which makes everything from file folders to flatware to mattresses primarily for the U.S. military, plans to occupy about half the space and continue leasing the rest to Home Comfort Furniture, says Mike Green, a BPG broker.

The price, about $46 per square foot, is 35 percent more than what BPG paid in 2006 and 80 percent more than the recently assessed value -- a good sign for landlords. The sale shows that there's life in an otherwise barren market for commercial property.

"It tells you that there is a demand still for users that are looking to buy buildings," says Jim Allaire, a broker with Colliers Pinkard in Raleigh.

As lenders have become more risk-averse, or less liquid in some cases, investors are sidelined. And that's cooling prices that overheated when money was easy. Last year warehouse sales amounted to only $76 million. That's down 84 percent from 2007.

The slack activity has made it less expensive for commercial renters to become owners. In many cases, it's easier for them to get loans than it is for individual investors.

Owner-occupants accounted for at least $95 million in Triangle office sales last year -- more than three times the total in 2007, an analysis of data from Real Capital Analytics and CB Richard Ellis shows. Almost one-quarter of last year's volume was attributed to occupants buying their spaces, up from about 3 percent in 2007.

The LC Industries deal is among the latest to foreshadow a similar trend on the industrial side.

It follows last month's $1.8 million sale of a 69,000-square-foot metal MeadWestvaco warehouse in Johnston County to a printing company.

Southeastern Freight Lines, meanwhile, paid Sumitomo Electric Lightwave $3.3 million for about 40 acres at 78 TW Alexander Drive on the edge of Research Triangle Park.

"If it's an investor trying to buy a vacant building right now, that's a pretty tough sell for a bank to do a loan," says Allaire, who helped represent the seller in those deals. "But if it's a user with an existing business, they can get out there and buy property."

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Amid the gloomy economy, an office tower rising at Raleigh's North Hills continues to attract new tenants.

The American Board of Anesthesiology will relocate its headquarters from 4101 Lake Boone Trail in Raleigh to more than 13,500 square feet in the 17-story CapTrust tower.

The group is the fourth tenant for the tower, which is scheduled to open in the fall and is now nearly 40 percent preleased.

"North Hills continues to be a destination where people want to work, live and play," says John Kane, CEO of Kane Realty, which is developing the building with Duke Realty.

Other tenants include CapTrust Financial Advisors, which secured the building's naming rights; law firm Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak, & Stewart; and commercial real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis.

The ABA is the national certification board for physician anesthesiologists. It now employs 27 and has plans to hire 10 more in the next two years.

jack.hagel@newsobserver.com or 919-829-8917

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