Seven Hundred Forty-Four Dollars A Foot, All Cash, In Albuquerque

$4,000,000 for 5,375 square feet — $744.19 per square foot. The asset is a newly constructed three-tenant retail strip in Albuquerque, New Mexico, 100% leased at sale to El Pollo Loco, Jamba and Xfinity. The seller is a New Mexico-based developer; the buyer is a private East Coast investor paying all cash. Faris Lee Investments — Jeff Conover, Scott DeYoung and Greg Lukosky — represented both sides.

Seven hundred forty-four dollars a foot in Albuquerque is the kind of number that gets dismissed as an outlier until you look at what actually cleared it. There was no leverage. Nobody's debt quote set the ceiling, no lender's proceeds test set the floor, and no rate-lock deadline shaped the timing.

That is the most honest form of price discovery available in retail right now. Most small-format net-lease pricing is a function of financing terms as much as of rent, and when debt tightens the print looks like a repricing when it is only a change in proceeds. This one has that variable removed.

The tenant roster explains the confidence. Three national credit tenants in 5,375 square feet implies an average footprint near 1,790 sf across three distinct demand drivers — quick-service food, a beverage concept and a telecom service point — a diversification profile that a single-tenant asset of the same size cannot offer at any price.

Newly constructed matters too. There is no near-term capital plan, no roof, no parking lot, no HVAC replacement cycle inside the buyer's first decade. A private investor paying all cash is buying a coupon with very little that can interrupt it.

What is missing is the cap rate, and without it the $744 figure cannot be translated into a yield. But as a per-foot mark on newly built, fully leased, multi-tenant small-format retail in a Mountain West secondary market, it is the cleanest comp of the week.

Implications

Private all-cash capital is setting the small-format retail bid, and it is doing so at levels institutional buyers cannot match once leverage math is applied. For developers of 4,000 to 8,000 square foot multi-tenant pads, the exit is not the institutional net-lease market — it is the private buyer who does not need a lender's consent. Build to that buyer's specification: national credit, short footprints, new construction, no deferred capital.

Flags: cap rate not disclosed. Both carrying outlets are sister publications running the same brokerage release, so corroboration is single-origin rather than independent. Buyer, seller, address and lease terms are all undisclosed.