Carter Validus Acquires Dallas Data Center

Carter Validus Mission Critical REIT has acquired its first property, paying $28.9 million to buy a fully-leased data center in Richardson, Texas. The purchase of the 20,000 square foot facility in the Technology Business Campus - Phase II in the suburbs of Dallas was the first deal for Carter Validus, which was formed last year to invest in data centers and healthcare IT facilities.

The purchase was disclosed in an SEC filing by Carter Validus, which raised $1.7 billion in an initial public offering in December.

Carter Validus is based in Tampa and headed by John Carter, a veteran real estate investor and principal of Carter & Associates. The company joins a growing number of real estate investment trusts focused on the data center business. Existing data center REITs include Digital Realty Trust (DLR), DuPont Fabros Technology (DFT) and CoreSite Realty (COR).

Data centers are part of a broader strategy in which Carter Validus hopes to take advantage of opportunities created by health care reform and its pending impact on medical real estate and IT infrastructure.

The Richardson property was developed by Stream Realty, and marked the second recent sale of one of the company's data centers n the greater Dallas market. Last week a Stream Realty property in Plano was purchased by Lincoln Rackhouse.