A Philadelphia-based industrial land investor is nearing 200 acres of property in Georgia after its latest portfolio purchase. 

Alterra IOS purchased 32 acres and 146K SF of industrial space in Metro Atlanta, including a 2-acre industrial plot in Norcross that traded for more than $1M per acre. 

The company has acquired the latest batch of metro-area industrial outdoor storage properties since February, according to documents reviewed by Bisnow from various counties and the Georgia Superior Court Clerks' Cooperative Authority database.

Alterra’s Atlanta holdings now tally 28 properties and 190 usable acres, according to a press release, during a period when the company amassed 500 properties across 39 states, making Alterra the largest U.S. IOS owner.

“Atlanta continues to be one of the country’s most important logistics and distribution hubs, and has emerged as one of the fastest-growing data center markets in the United States,” Alterra Senior Associate Sean Christman said in the release.

“As population growth and economic activity continue to accelerate across the Southeast, we remain focused on acquiring strategically located IOS assets in markets where transportation infrastructure, tenant demand and limited supply support long-term value creation.”

The latest battery of acquisitions includes:

• 2400 Barrett Lakes Blvd., a 19-acre industrial site with a 117,600 SF warehouse in Kennesaw, from RLR Investments for $21M in February. RLR acquired the same property in 2016 for $7.1M, according to Cobb County property records. 

• 5 acres and a 10K SF warehouse at 2611 U.S. Highway 42 South in Locust Grove from an individual investor named Mitchell Valorie for $3.8M. Valorie paid $112K for the land in 2012, per Henry County records.

• A 6K SF office and warehouse facility coupled with 2 acres at 2000 Meredith Park Drive in McDonough from Cygnus Capital for $2.3M. Cygnus Capital purchased the property in 2024 for just shy of $1M, according to Henry County records. 

• 550 Discovery Place, a 4-acre property with a 12K SF warehouse in Mableton adjacent to the Fulton County airport, fully leased to a regional equipment rental dealer, according to the release. Halo Property Group, which paid $3.7M in 2024 for the property, sold it to Alterra for $6.4M, per Cobb property records.

• A 2-acre parcel at 4303 Communications Drive in Norcross, which is fully leased to a national wholesale food distributor, according to the release. Alterra paid $2.6M in May to an LLC titled Communications DR Truck Storage, which previously purchased the property in 2015 for $395K, as shown in Gwinnett County property records. 

Alterra has been at the spearpoint of the IOS investment craze in recent years, a subsector of the industrial real estate market that has shifted from mom-and-pop investors to growing institutional ownership.

Institutional capital makes up upward of 45% of IOS acquisitions this year, up from 25% to 30% four years ago, according to a March study by commercial real estate brokerage firm Matthews.

In June, Alterra co-founder Leo Addimando said during a NAIOP podcast that institutional investors previously shied away from the IOS sector because of inconsistent zoning classifications and small property sizes. But for logistics companies, whose transportation costs can be half of overall capital expenditures, prime IOS sites near customers and major transportation networks are key to meeting demand. 

“It’s the real estate hiding in plain sight,” Addimando said to CNBC in November. “There is over a trillion dollars of IOS real estate in the U.S., but most of that is municipally, government-owned. It’s the shipyard, it’s the airport. There’s about $300B of it, which is owned by mostly small local owners that own businesses, not institutional, and that’s the addressable market.”

IOS performance is certainly notable, with rents increasing 123% since 2020 across the U.S., especially as companies use the storage as staging grounds for the boom in data center construction, according to CNBC. 

A quarter of industrial outdoor storage demand is focused on construction and building material storage, followed by an equal amount of logistics and trucking, according to Matthews. And new supply of IOS properties is constrained, with delivery estimated at less than 2% of total annual inventory due to city and county zoning restrictions, Matthews stated. 

That lack of new supply has helped push rents on IOS properties up faster than at traditional industrial properties, Matthews added, with rents ranging from $5K to $15K per acre per month in primary markets. 

This has attracted institutional investor attention.

JPMorgan Asset Management advised Zenith IOS for a $700M joint venture with institutional investors for IOS properties across the country with a gross asset value of more than $1.5B earlier this month, the New York Real Estate Journal reported. 

Blackstone Real Estate Debt Strategies also lent Alterra $244K in June, secured in part by 37 Alterra IOS properties, according to a June press release. Alterra raised more than $1.8B in institutional financing, including its Alterra IOS Venture II and Venture III funds, which total more than $1.4B.

Greg Boler, the founder of industrial development firm KMT Partners, said, though, IOS demand has been uneven in recent months, with some submarkets slowing down as trucking companies battle the volatility around President Donald Trump’s tariff policies and the ongoing war with Iran. 

“All of that has certainly impacted the amount of container demand into Atlanta,” Boler said. “But we are seeing other submarkets pick up for IOS,” including along the Interstate 20 West corridor and the northern segments of Interstates 85 and 75.

“We’re hopeful that as we kind of get into the end of this year and into next year, that demand will pick back up,” he said.