Sam Trachtman Buys North Side Multifamily Portfolio for $23M

Another longtime holder of North Side multifamily property has sold off a chunk of a portfolio, and Sam Trachtman has taken advantage of the seldom chance to enter the market.

Trachtman’s Lincolnwood-based real estate investment firm STAK Holdings is making a value-add play in Chicago with a $23 million deal that represents the first time the five buildings involved in the trade have changed hands since the 1970s.

The properties total 198 units, with three located in the 5300 block of North Damen Avenue and the others at 7250 North Western Avenue and 2559 West Bryn Mawr Avenue in the West Rogers Park, Bowmanville and Budlong Woods neighborhoods.

The deal makes for a late entry as one of the largest transactions on the Far North Side in 2022.

“It’s incredibly rare to find a portfolio of this size with nearly 200 units, value-add buildings in these North Side neighborhoods,” Kiser Group broker Danny Logarakis said in a statement.

The seller is former Citadel hedge fund manager and current Neuberger Berman Investment Advisers managing director Joseph Rotter, according to a social media post. Matt Bowker’s Lodge Financial provided financing. Rotter had built up a 500-unit portfolio, according to Kiser Group. He didn’t return a request for comment.

Rotter isn’t alone among investors to have removed some chips from the table in recent months through sales of apartments that have been held for many years. Just outside city limits in suburban Evanston, the Wirtz family, owners of the NHL’s Chicago Blackhawks, sold its multifamily portfolio in the North Shore town for $35 million. Another clan connected to a former Indianapolis 500 champion with Chicago ties sold a Lincoln Park apartment building that had been within the family for more than 80 years over the summer for $23 million.

Nearly all of the units involved in Trachtman’s purchase were vacant at the time of the sale, and the buyer plans to make interior renovations, Kiser Group said.

A third-quarter report from Marcus & Millichap projected that the Chicago metropolitan area’s multifamily market would expand its inventory by less than 1 percent, aiding existing structures like those in Trachtman’s deal. The report projected that 6,200 units would be completed in 2022, the smallest increase since 2015, when just under 5,000 new apartments were finished, and that vacancy would continue its downward trajectory through the end of the year.