Bender’s $28M makes a seller of busy suburban Chicago apartments buyer FPA 

Amid an otherwise bullish buying spree in the Chicago area, FPA Multifamily offloaded one suburban asset for a small gain.

San Francisco-based FPA, led by Greg Fowler, sold Arrive at Town Center, an 85-unit apartment complex with 10,000 square feet of ground floor retail in north suburban Vernon Hills, to Chicago-based Kurt Bender’s firm Bender Companies.

Bender paid $11 million for the property at 1255 Town Center Road in Vernon Hills and assumed FPA’s $16.8 million Fannie Mae loan, which matures in 2029. The investment totaled nearly $28 million, or about $327,000 per unit, without factoring in the retail space.

When FPA bought the property in 2018, the firm put $8.5 million into the purchase in addition to taking out the $16 million loan, totaling about $24.5 million invested.

Bender said his firm is eyeing rebranding the complex and making some improvements to the property, which includes one-, two-, and three-bedroom units with floor plans averaging 1,200 square feet. 

JLL’s Kevin Girard, Zach Kaufman, and Bill Baumann represented Bender Companies in the transaction.

The sale was an anomaly for FPA, which has been bulking up its multifamily portfolio in Chicagoland.

In March, an affiliate of FPA paid $144 million for the 500-unit Paragon Chicago tower in the South Loop, at 1326 South Michigan Avenue. The total penned out to about $288,000 per unit.

And last month, the firm paid $60 million for the 270-unit Emerson Apartments in Oak Park and $102 million, or about $159,000 per unit, for the 642-unit Reserve at Hoffman Estates.

Rounding out the recent spending spree was FPA’s purchase of the 270-unit Vantage at Oak Park which closed July 31. Information about the sale price has not yet been publicly documented.

FPA and Bender are making moves in a multifamily market that has shown signs of promise despite a difficult interest rate environment. As Chicago emerged as a leading market for rent growth in the U.S. throughout 2023 and into 2024, new investors started coming to the table with offers alongside longtime multifamily players. However, the end results have not always been in favor of the sellers as stubborn interest rates cut into their profit margins. 

An August analysis by The Real Deal found that about half of the high-profile apartment complexes that have sold in the first half of this year traded at a profit for the sellers. Four sales resulted in a loss for the seller, and four had unknown results due to still-unrecorded sale prices or loan information.

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