In The News

SentriLock relocating from Sharonville to West Chester

November 30, 2012

Business Courier by Jon Newberry, Staff Reporter

The National Association of Realtors acquired a vacant former window factory in West Chester for $3.6 million and plans to relocate its SentriLock LLC subsidiary in Sharonville.

SentriLock, which has 84 employees, has outgrown its current leased facility on East Kemper Road, said Bill Armstrong, NAR’s treasurer who handled the acquisition.

The property deal closed this week, according to the Butler County auditor’s website. The 96,000-square-foot plant is at 7701 Service Center Drive, off Cox Road and abutting northbound Interstate 75.

Mike Lowe at CBRE represented the seller, and David Metz at NAI Bergman represented NAR.

NAR invested in SentriLock in 2003 when it was founded as a start-up, Armstrong said. It has since garnered about 25 percent of the market for electronic lock boxes used by the real estate industry to control access to vacant properties. NAR later bought out the minority shareholders and now owns the business outright, he said.

The organization decided to buy a building rather than continue paying rent in part because it wasn’t making any return on its cash.

“We’re paying a significant amount of money in rent. It made sense for us to go out and buy a building and earn some rent,” Armstrong said.

NAR is building out some office space in part of the building and will initially use about half of it for SentriLock’s operations. It’s also talking with prospective tenants, he said. The arrangement gives it room to expand in the future. It expects to grow to about 120 employees within five years, he said.

SentriLock will probably relocate from Sharonville in early summer, Armstrong said. NAR is looking into applying for available tax incentives, he said.

There are currently 15 freestanding industrial buildings between 50,000 and 250,000 square feet for sale in the Tri-County/West Chester submarket, according to Loren DeFilippo, senior regional director at Xceligent Inc. in Cincinnati.

The price per square foot that NAR paid was higher than average, but it’s a high-quality building with outstanding visibility, DeFilippo said.