By Bradley J. Fikes

As published in The North County Times, September 21, 2005

OCEANSIDE - Tired of renting, want to buy your own place, but can't afford a traditional detached home? Buy a condo.

An industrial condo, that is.

Industrial condominiums are much like their residential equivalents, only designed for small businesses. They're part of an attached building, cost less than stand-alone buildings, and give autonomy that renters don't have.

Two industrial condo projects are now under construction in Oceanside's Ocean Ranch Corporate Centre. One is the Venture Commerce Center, offering 24 properties from 1,147 to 3,290 square feet in four buildings, for a total of just over 58,000 square feet. It is scheduled for completion in January, said Robert Eves, president of Venture Commerce Center.

Venture Corp. is building Venture Commerce Centers throughout the state, including one recently completed in Chula Vista. Another one is planned in Murrieta, but a size has not yet been selected, Eves said.

Another is the confusingly named Ocean Ranch Corporate Center, in the Ocean Ranch Corporate Centre - notice how the developers changed the spelling from the -er name of the property. This 83,000-square-foot project, spanning six buildings, offers for sale or lease properties from 1,700 square feet to an entire building at nearly 11,500 square feet.

Completion of Ocean Ranch Corporate Center is expected in December, said David Onosko, a senior vice president with Coldwell Banker Commercial. Onosko and colleague Bob Willingham are agents for the project.

The cost is $160 to $180 per square foot, Onosko said.

"Right now, 40 percent of the project is pre-sold," Onosko said. "The response has been beyond our expectations. Usually, customers want to look at a property before they buy."

Venture Commerce Center has pre-sold five properties, said Phil Linton, a broker for the project with Grubb & Ellis-BRE Commercial. The properties are not sold by square foot, Linton said. However, if the price were broken down that way, it ranges from $225 per square foot for properties designed to be half-office and half-industrial or warehouse space, and $290 per square foot for properties equipped to be entirely office space.

Freedom to use your own property without a landlord looking over your shoulder is one of the biggest incentives to buying, Eves said. While each Venture Commerce Center property is physically adjacent in any building, they all have separate entrances and other amenities, he said, so every business has privacy.

Financing is available for the purchases through the Small Business Administration, Linton said. Typically, 90 percent of the purchase is funded through the SBA loan, meaning that the companies must pay 10 percent as the down payment. The largest property sold to date at the Venture Commerce Center in Oceanside went for $775,000, Linton said, meaning that the buyer had to pay $77,500.

For more information on the Ocean Ranch Corporate Center, call Onosko at (760) 517-5869 or Willingham at (760) 517-5846.

For more information about the Venture Commerce Center, call Linton at (858) 546-5472.