Equity Residential, Starwood close $5.4B resi deal

Sam Zell’s Equity Residential closed its sale of a massive, 23,000-unit residential portfolio to Barry Sternlicht’s Starwood Capital Group for nearly $5.4 billion, the Chicago-based real estate investment trust announced Wednesday.

The deal sees Greenwich, Conn.-based Starwood acquire 72 properties comprised of mostly low- and mid-rise rental buildings in suburban markets around Denver, Seattle, Washington, D.C., South Florida and Southern California.

Starwood is paying $5.365 billion for the 23,262-unit portfolio, or just over $230,600 per unit. Equity Residential’s apartment holdings now stand at 318 properties consisting of more than 85,900 units across the country.

Zell’s REIT reportedly plans to sell another 26 of those properties this year, with Equity Residential CEO David Neithercut citing the company’s belief that that long-term returns “in the urban core [markets] will exceed those in other markets.”

The two sides first announced the transaction in October — one week after Blackstone Group and Ivanhoe Cambridge unveiled their $5.3 billion acquisition of Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village residential complex. – Rey Mashayekhi