MLG Capital Buys Bolingbrook Apartments for $73M

Timothy Wallen closed out 2023 as a big multifamily buyer with one of suburban Chicago’s priciest trades of the year.

Wallen’s Brookfield, Wisconsin-based firm MLG Capital paid $73 million for a 374-unit rental complex in southwest suburban Bolingbrook, Will County records show. The price is a little over $195,000 per unit.

Northmarq Capital provided a $47 million mortgage for the purchase of the Meadows at River Run, at 350 Whitewater Drive, records show.

The 2001-built complex was MLG’s 18th and final acquisition of 2023, and it now owns 1,056 units in Illinois.

The company “remained very active despite overall transaction activity being down significantly,” MLG’s Daniel Price said.

The seller was Philadelphia-based Independence Realty Trust, which sold a portfolio of four properties in four markets last month for a combined $200 million, according to a news release. IRT used those proceeds to pay off $112 million in debt tied to the properties and another $85 million that it had borrowed on an outstanding line of credit.

“These recent non-core asset sales highlight our effort to exit or reduce our presence in certain markets while also deleveraging our balance sheet over the near term,” said Scott Schaeffer, Chairman and CEO of IRT. “These initiatives will continue to increase our financial flexibility, reduce our leverage and keep us on-track towards achieving an investment grade rating.”

IRT purchased the Meadows property for $59 million in 2015, public records show, and a mortgage doesn’t appear to have been recorded on the property during the firm’s ownership.

The sale stands out in a market defined by tightening capital markets and a thinning herd of buyers and lenders willing to take on large deals. Several other apartment properties in Chicago and its suburbs last year traded at discounts.

The sale extends a streak of investor interest in mid market multifamily in the southwest suburbs of Chicago.

New York-based Osso Capital, a firm co-founded by former Blackstone executives Spencer Vegosen and Olivia John, spent $168 million in October to buy two apartment complexes in the western and southwestern suburbs, according to public records.