Multifamily heavy hitter Waterton notched an $82 million sale in the Chicago suburbs last month.
Chicago-based Waterton sold the Oaks and Laurels of Willow Hill, a sprawling 749-unit suburban apartment community in Justice, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California-based Turner Impact Capital, public records show. The sale of the complex, which is about 20 miles southwest of Chicago, comes out to about $110,000 per unit.
Waterton had held onto the apartments for over 20 years. The firm bought the property in 2003, and it was built in 1987.
Rent for the units in the three-story apartment community range from about $1,100 to $1,600 per month. Turner specializes in workforce housing investments, according to its website. The company’s Multifamily Impact Fund was established specifically to buy and preserve naturally occurring affordable housing.
And the firm is no stranger to Chicago.
“We own just shy of 4,000 units in the Chicago market,” said Turner’s Managing Director Gary Rodney. “Its somewhere that we’ve been able to perform very well.”
Turner typically holds buildings for a seven year period before considering selling, ideally to a company with similar objectives, Rodney said. In that time, they bring in in-house property management and find ways to reduce turnover and operational costs to keep at least half or more of the units affordable to people making 80 percent of the area income.
Representatives of Waterton did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The sale took place off market, CBRE broker John Jaeger said, and it’s part of a flurry of activity coming from Waterton.
Waterton has been active in Chicago’s multifamily market as interest picks up from local and out-of-state buyers. Suburban Chicago has been ranked one of the most active multifamily markets in the country consistently this year as supply dries up and demand in Sun Belt cities decreases.
“Housing prices are very high, so people are renting for longer. And there’s really not a lot of new product to choose from,” Jaeger said. “We’re getting some great interest in our suburban assets.”
Last month, Waterton dropped $90 million to buy a 263-unit building known as the Mason in buzzy Fulton Market. The price came out to about $342,000 per unit. Over the summer, it spent $320,000 per unit with the $167 million purchase of a 522-unit property in the Los Angeles area.
In Chicago’s Buena Park neighborhood, the company is looking to offload the Montrose Apartments, which the firm has owned since 2015.
Waterton purchased the 18-story, 287-unit building for $65 million, with a $61 million mortgage from JPMorgan. The deal came out to $226,000 per unit.
Earlier this year Waterton also listed the 346-unit Grand Central apartments in the South Loop for sale, two years after acquiring it for $81.9 million, or $237,000 per unit.