Three apartment complexes on the city’s Near West Side were the priciest multifamily properties to change hands in the Chicago area last month, each selling for at least $60 million.
But the sagas of the top two buildings, both completed since 2015, could be red flags the city’s high-end apartment market. Akara Partners and CA Ventures sold their 227-unit Kenect development after two years and two separate stints on the market, and Clarion Partners swallowed a $11.5 million loss on its 149-unit Circa 922 complex in the West Loop.
The list also includes a renovated student housing facility near University Village, a 168-unit portion of a fractured condo complex in Bronzeville and an 84-unit apartment community in suburban Chicago Ridge.
The five sales combined for nearly $239 million in value, more than doubling the $115 million paid in January’s top five multifamily trades but falling just short of the $245 million spent on December’s highest-valued sales.
All prices are drawn from Cook County property records.
504 North Green Street | $85.5 million
Akara Partners and CA Ventures originally tried to sell their 227-unit Kenect apartment complex in 2017, a year after they finished it, but they later pulled it off the market. They tried again late last year, leading to a $85.5 million sale to Chicago-based Newcastle Limited last month.
The development, which also includes 13,000 square feet of retail space, joined several other Newcastle acquisitions in the past year.
In May, the firm bought a 2,200-square-foot retail space on the ground floor of the residential tower at 2 West Delaware Place in the Gold Coast for $11.6 million. Weeks later, it acquired a two-story retail building at 2368 North Clark Street in Lincoln Park for $6.1 million.
2. 922 West Washington Boulevard | $63 million
New York-based Clarion Partners took a big loss on the 149-unit Circa 922 complex when it sold it to Pacific Life Insurance Company for $63 million last month. Four years earlier, Clarion paid $74.5 million to acquire the 149-unit complex.
Clarion hired CBRE last summer to market the apartments, which are divided between a 45-unit loft building and a larger 104-unit complex. The development was completed in 2015.
3. 847 West Jackson Boulevard | $60 million
California-based NB Private Capital bought the 477-bed Tailor Lofts student housing complex, which sits a block from the UIC-Halsted CTA Blue Line station near the University of Illinois at Chicago campus.
The seller, Chicago-based Blue Vista, spent $16 million in 2007 to acquire what then was an office building. In 2010, Blue Star leveraged $10 million in historic tax credits to convert the building into student apartments. The total construction cost was $59 million.
The sale was NB Capital’s second purchase of a student housing complex since last year, when it paid $73.5 million to buy The Buckingham building in the South Loop.
4. 606 East Woodland Park Avenue | $23.5 million
Brothers Jon and Julian Mickelson paid $23.5 million for 168 of the 240 units in this fractured condo complex in Bronzeville. That’s more than triple the $7 million the seller, the Luzzatto Company, spent on the units in 2010 before renovating them.
The complex sits a few blocks south of the former site of the Michael Reese Hospital, where Farpoint Development is leading a team selected by city leaders to build a 50-acre mega-development.
The Mickelson brothers’ company, called South Side Stories Property Management, has been investing in Bronzeville properties since 2007.
5. 10350 South Ridgeland Avenue, Chicago Ridge | $6.7 million
The Chicago-based Bender Company bought the 84-unit Ridgeland Court Apartments in south suburban Park Ridge from a trust.
Bender is re-branding the complex as “Ridgeland Station” because of the Metra train stop on the property’s doorstep, Bender principal Kurt Bender said.
The company owns a portfolio of some 400 apartments spread among multiple suburbs in Illinois and in southwest Michigan.