Allianz Real Estate has acquired a 49% stake in a 6.1M SF national logistics portfolio as part of a joint venture partnership the company is forming with Crow Holdings.

The portfolio, which contains key assets across Texas, California's Inland Empire and Chicago, is anchored by a logistics park located between Dallas and Fort Worth.

Developer Crow Holdings has experience building out last-mile-focused assets and managing strategic industrial assets across the U.S., particularly in the Southwest.

"Partnering with Crow Holdings — a trusted partner for several years on both the debt and equity side — allows us to grow alongside a developer that understands the dynamics and needs of the U.S. market,” Allianz Real Estate of America CEO Christoph Donner said in a press release.

About 88% of the assets in the acquired portfolio are in Texas, with 74% of those Lone Star State properties sitting in Dallas and another 14% in Houston.

Dallas and Houston remain top industrial plays with the Panama Canal expansion allowing for more container and shipping traffic to flow through the Texas Gulf Coast, Allianz and Crow noted in a press release about the joint venture. Both cities benefit from DFW's intermodal infrastructure base and a series of highways that connect the cities to key U.S. markets.

The rest of the portfolio is located between Chicago and California's Inland Empire. The Inland Empire is a key part of the joint venture's distribution network with 40% of the country's goods flowing through the area, Crow and Allianz noted in a statement.

Demand in the DFW industrial market has remained strong throughout the coronavirus pandemic, with the market absorbing 15M SF of industrial space from the beginning of the year through the third quarter, according to CBRE data.

The same data shows that despite deliveries of new industrial product in recent years, DFW's industrial vacancy rate remained stable in 2020, even dropping slightly to 5.8% as e-commerce and last-mile delivery demand grew during the pandemic.