Funds managed by Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing (MSREI) have bought a newly built, 935,000-square-foot logistics facility in Stafford, Va., for $172.1 million, backed by a long-term lease and, in the buyer’s telling, by demand tied to the Northern Virginia data center build-out.
Morgan Stanley Investment Management announced the acquisition on Oct. 26, 2026. The price works out to about $184 per square foot.
The building and the lease
The Class A facility was constructed in 2026 and features 40-foot clear heights, a cross-dock configuration, extensive loading capacity and immediate access to Interstate 95, according to the release. It sits roughly an hour from both Washington, D.C., and Richmond.
The property is subject to a long-term net lease with J.E. Richards, a structure that generally passes property taxes, insurance and maintenance costs to the tenant. The lease is guaranteed by J.E. Richards’ parent, Quanta Services, which the release describes as an investment-grade “leading provider of specialty infrastructure solutions.” The release does not disclose the lease term, the rent or the seller.
That combination of a brand-new building, a single tenant and an investment-grade guarantee is what MSREI emphasized. “This acquisition represents an opportunity to invest in a newly developed, high-quality industrial asset supported by strong tenant credit and compelling long-term demand drivers,” said David Gross, a managing director at Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing.
The data center angle
Gross was explicit about where he sees the demand coming from. “The Northern Virginia region continues to benefit from significant investment in digital infrastructure, which is creating opportunities across the broader ecosystem of businesses and real estate that support its continued expansion,” he said.
On our reading, the deal is a bet on that supporting ecosystem rather than on data centers themselves: a warehouse leased to a contractor backed by an infrastructure-services company, on the I-95 corridor between Washington and Richmond. The build-out has reshaped Virginia’s real estate in other ways too. State regulators have ordered data centers to pay for dedicated transmission infrastructure, and contractors continue to sign large construction deals there, including Skanska’s $238 million contract for a second data center building in the state.
MSREI keeps buying industrial
The Stafford purchase extends a run of single-asset industrial buys by MSREI. In December 2025 it acquired a last-mile delivery facility next to Los Angeles International Airport for $211 million, saying at the time that the deal brought its U.S. industrial portfolio to more than 75 million square feet. It also bought Ace Hardware’s 1.5 million-square-foot Kansas City distribution hub for $158.5 million.
MSREI is Morgan Stanley’s global private real estate investment business. It currently manages $58 billion of gross real estate assets worldwide from 17 offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia, according to the release. Its parent, Morgan Stanley Investment Management, reported $2.1 trillion in assets under management or supervision as of Sept. 30, 2026.
Separately, Morgan Stanley has raised its 2026 commercial real estate forecast to $635 billion. More industrial and logistics coverage is in RealtyWire’s Commercial Real Estate section.
