A Miami-based investment firm has paid $86 million for a 14-property industrial portfolio in Doral, a near-record price per square foot that closes out five decades of ownership by a single South Florida family. Midtown Capital Partners bought the roughly 300,000-square-foot cluster of small-bay warehouses along Northwest 54th Street, Northwest 56th Street, Northwest 79th Avenue and Northwest 82nd Avenue, paying about $296 per square foot for buildings that local trade businesses have relied on for years.
The sale, first reported by The Real Deal, marks the end of the Waas family's long run in Doral commercial real estate. Barbara Waas, Maxwell Waas, Martin Waas and Richard Waas developed all but one of the properties in the portfolio and managed them for decades, according to the outlet, and the family helped shape the city of Doral itself well before its 2003 incorporation. Martin Waas represented all 13 separate sellers in the transaction, the report notes.
Family patriarch Max Waas, who co-founded Waas Realty in 1972 alongside his wife Barbara and son Martin, died in July 2025 at age 97, according to an obituary published by Dignity Memorial. Max and son Richard later launched Waas Construction in 1973, building out the same small-bay footprint the family would manage in Doral for the next half-century.
Why Small-Bay Warehouses Command a Premium
Midtown Capital Managing Director Zach Fox described the acquisition as exactly the kind of well-located, difficult-to-replicate small-bay industrial product the firm seeks, per the same account from The Real Deal. Those buildings, which typically offer multi-tenant units between 600 and 2,500 square feet, primarily serve local service trade businesses such as auto mechanics, electrical contractors and home improvement suppliers that need functional space without heavy corporate overhead, according to Waas Realty.
That tenant base helps explain why small-bay assets are outperforming the rest of the industrial market. Nationwide, shallow-bay and small-bay industrial vacancy held between 3.4% and 4.8% in the second quarter of 2026, according to WareCRE, even as vacancy at large-scale big-box logistics facilities climbed above 8% and overall U.S. industrial vacancy reached roughly 7.0%. Miami's own industrial market posted 6.9% vacancy in the second quarter alongside 402,000 square feet of positive net absorption, The Real Deal reports, while rents across the market remained near historic highs.
Doral's Airport West submarket has run especially tight, with vacancy consistently under 3% in recent years thanks to proximity to Miami International Airport's air cargo facilities and freight links to PortMiami, according to Miami Today. Midtown Capital's $296-per-square-foot price also sits well above Miami-Dade County's broader industrial benchmark of $257 per square foot recorded in the first quarter of 2026 by Avison Young, whose Florida Capital Markets team represented Midtown Capital in the Doral deal alongside brokers Michael Fay and David Spillers. Spillers said tightening small-bay supply and demand from local businesses fueled investor interest and pushed rents higher, the outlet reports. Brokers Tommy Gil and David Olade also represented Midtown Capital in the transaction, according to The Real Deal.
Part of a Statewide Buying Spree
The Doral purchase extends an aggressive multi-market run for Midtown Capital, which was co-founded in 2010 and now manages a real estate portfolio topping $1 billion, spanning more than 3 million square feet of industrial, multifamily and office space, per LoopNet. The firm paid $37 million in 2022 for Vista Business Park, a six-building complex in West Palm Beach, and closed a $26.5 million industrial acquisition in Naples in July 2026.
Just weeks before the Doral deal, Midtown Capital paid $56.1 million for Cypress Park, a five-building, roughly 257,000-square-foot shallow-bay industrial complex near Orlando International Airport that was 99% leased at closing, as Hoodline previously reported. Michael Waite represented Midtown Capital in that transaction. The firm has also been active outside industrial real estate, paying $44.5 million for a Pembroke Pines office complex it plans to eventually redevelop into a multifamily property, and securing an $84 million construction bridge loan in Fort Lauderdale tied to its Astor Park Flagler Village apartment project.
Institutions Keep Circling Family-Held Warehouses
Midtown Capital is far from the only institutional buyer chasing small-bay warehouses in western Miami-Dade County. Boston-based Longpoint Partners paid $38.8 million, or $264 per square foot, in July for a four-building, 146,700-square-foot small-bay portfolio in neighboring Medley, which borders Doral to the north, Hoodline previously reported. In May, Woodhill Real Estate closed a $32 million purchase of a 10-building, 165,000-square-foot small-bay portfolio in East Hialeah, taking over fully leased properties from a family that had owned them for 40 years, according to Hoodline's earlier coverage.
The wave of institutional buying is unfolding as Doral's commercial landscape shifts on multiple fronts, from the 2.6-million-square-foot Bridge Point Doral logistics complex to residential conversions under Florida's Live Local Act, including the $58 million Oasis at Doral project. Together, the deals point to a broader handoff underway across South Florida's industrial corridors, as institutional asset managers acquire the small-bay warehouse portfolios that family developers built and held for generations.
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