Nuveen Buys Suburban Chicago Apartments for $88 Million

A Nuveen affiliate just made a big bet on suburban Chicago apartments, paying $87.8 million for Uptown La Grange — the priciest rental property trade in the west suburb’s history.

Nuveen Real Estate’s U.S. Cities Multifamily bought the 254-unit complex at 31 East Ogden Avenue from Oak Brook-based JVM Realty, Crain’s reported. The price amounts to $345,700 per unit. It’s the second suburban pickup for the investment manager in less than a year, following its $65 million buy of the 167-unit Dash Downers Grove in October.

The sale price is slightly below the $89.4 million JVM paid in 2019. CBRE brokers John Jaeger, Justin Puppi and Jason Zyck repped JVM in the deal. No mortgage was recorded, suggesting Nuveen may have paid cash.

The five-story building, completed in 2017, is the only large apartment complex built in La Grange since 1970 and the only Class A asset in the village, CBRE marketing materials said. Units range from studios to three-bedrooms, with average rents of $2,530 per month, or $2.64 per square foot — above the suburban median of $2.14, per Integra Realty Resources. Suburban Chicago’s apartment market is tight, with 97.8 percent occupancy and rents up 4 percent year-over-year amid high construction costs and economic uncertainty.

Investors have been circling well-leased suburban rentals as urban rent growth cools. CBRE’s pitch to buyers hinted there’s still room to push rents through upgrades.

The deal comes amid other sizable suburban trades: Valley Lo Towers in Glenview fetched $45.5 million in June, while Mount Prospect’s Top of the Mount sold for roughly $60 million in April.

The sale is another signal that the institutional capital that once chased urban trophy towers is increasingly looking outside the urban core in search of stable income and limited competition.— Eric Weilbacher