Greystar closes on land, loan for new Davie apartments

Greystar Real Estate Partners just paid $11.5 million for a stretch of vacant land in Davie, where it is now breaking ground on a new apartment development.

The deal includes just under 15 acres of development turf along Reese Road near I-595, according to Broward County records. At the same time that Greystar closed on its land deal, the developer also scored a $52.3 million construction loan from Wells Fargo Bank.

With financing in hand, Greystar has begun construction work on a Class A apartment community with 394 units plus parking and “related amenities.”

This will be the second apartment project Greystar has built in that same region. Three years ago, the multifamily developer purchased another 15 acres of land and built a 376-unit community named Elan 33 West, which it later sold to New York’s AVR Realty Company for $79 million.

Both sites were sold by Forman Industrial Land, headed by the Forman family of Fort Lauderdale.

South Florida’s multifamily market was a hot ticket last year, seeing more than $1.2 billion worth of rental properties trading hands among the region’s three counties.

Real estate’s biggest names like billionaire Richard LeFrak have pointed toward steady rental growth and booming demand as some of the factors driving multifamily right now, in a trend that’s expected to continue into the foreseeable future.

As part of that market shift, Greystar recently agreed to sell off a mammoth 10,399-unit portfolio to financial giant Blackstone Group in exchange for $2 billion.