Avanath swings on $119M North Side apartments deal

Daryl Carter just made one of his biggest deals in Chicago.

Avanath, an Irvine, California-based firm whose CEO and founder is Carter, paid $119 million for the 17-story Lincoln Park Plaza apartment tower, giving the firm its fifth Chicago-area property, Crain’s reported.

The deal closed around the same time as Canadian investment firm Morguard’s $81 million purchase of the Xavier apartments in the Cabrini-Green area, as the deals provided a jolt to what had been a slow market in recent months for big multifamily complexes in the city.

Avanath, which specializes in affordable housing properties, bought the 256-unit, mixed-income complex at 600 West Diversey Parkway from an affiliate of BJB Partners. Lincoln Park Plaza holds 147 affordable units and has performed well even in the midst of high interest rates and the uncertainties of the pandemic, Avanath’s John Williams said.

“We have identified an opportunity to own and manage a community that is consistently above 97 percent occupied, performed well throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, and has a lengthy interest list of prospective residents, in addition to providing attainable housing to renters in this trendy downtown Chicago enclave,” Williams said in a statement.

Avanath’s other Chicago holdings include the 156-unit Scotland Yard in Uptown, and the 582-unit Acclaim at Hinsdale Lake in Willowbrook. It also owns the 180-unit Country Wood complex in Naperville and the 59-unit Affinity on North in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood, with its holdings totaling more than 1,300 apartments in Illinois.

Meanwhile, Morguard purchased the Xavier, an 18-story high rise at 625 West Division Street, from Green Cities. The Xavier likewise has a strong occupancy rate of nearly 94 percent, despite rent bumping up 4 percent from last year to an average of $2,454 per month.

That acquisition followed an even bigger Chicago purchase by Morguard last year, when it spent $133 million on a 350-unit apartment building in the Fulton River District area.

— Quinn Donoghue