Selling the Vacancy: How a 78%-Occupied Center Closed Over Ask

Alessandro Shoppes is a Starbucks-anchored center at one of Moreno Valley's busiest corners — three buildings, roughly 23,792 square feet on 1.91 acres at Perris and Alessandro, with 50,000-plus cars a day passing the intersection. The complication: it was 78% occupied. A vacancy like that is where most listings go quiet — priced off in-place income it looks expensive, priced off potential it looks like a promise.

The owner wanted full value in a market where Inland Empire retail rents were climbing more than five percent a year — which meant the vacancy had to be sold as the upside it was, to buyers underwriting the lease-up, not apologized for.

Francisco — then a Senior Associate on the Cushman & Wakefield listing team led by Joseph Lising — helped build the campaign around honest, two-sided pricing: $7.9 million presented at a 5.2% cap on in-place income and a 7.2% cap stabilized, with the lease-up math shown in the offering memorandum rather than implied.

Distribution ran wide and tracked: serialized offering-memorandum copies to registered prospects, a direct email campaign to the buyer database, and open-market exposure through CREXi — so the team knew who was engaging, not just how many.

When offers arrived, the team ran them as a field, not a queue: within a single week in March 2022, multiple buyers held counters simultaneously — documented across competing LOIs from private investors and LLC buyers, one opening as low as $7.5 million.

The competition did what competition does: the center closed at $8,000,000 — a hundred thousand dollars over the asking price — with the winning buyer selected from a documented field of four-plus written offers.

The value-add thesis sold as priced: the buyer acquired a corner center with anchor credit, scheduled rent increases in the in-place leases, and the vacant 22% underwritten as the growth story it was marketed to be.