OC Ventures drops $33M on student housing property

Local investment firm OC Ventures bought a residential property near the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois, adding to its local student housing portfolio.

OC spent $33 million for X Chicago, a 99-unit, 167-bed property at 710 West 14th St., less than a block south of the college’s main campus, Crain’s reported. The purchase came about three years after OC spent almost $51 million for the Automatic Lofts student housing complex in the West Loop.

X Chicago, which OC plans to finance with about $10.5 million in equity, is operated as a co-living property. Previous owners Property Markets Group rented out apartments in the building by bed and not by unit, similar to student housing. OC’s management company, Varsity Campus, will take over the property and make it more explicitly for student housing.

OC’s other student housing property in the West Loop, is the Letterman Chicago. Rents in that building have risen more than 12 percent over the past year, potentially due to UIC’s 17 percent increase in enrollment over the past five years to 34,000 students.

Established in 1859, UIC is a public research university and the largest in the Chicago metropolitan area.

OC owns eight student housing properties across the nation, with a presence in Albany and Buffalo, New York; Greensboro, North Carolina; and Auburn, Alabama. The firm plans to spend more than $35 million on the new X Chicago property and invest $1.2 million of its own capital. OC plans to borrow $23.8 million to finance the rest of the project.

PMG recently unloaded another Chicago-area apartment building. The company sold the 140-unit L Logan Square apartment building for $42 million a few months ago.

— Victoria Pruitt