Prolific Chicago investor Stuart Handler recently sold a three-property multifamily portfolio in Hyde Park for $23.5 million.
The transaction came out to roughly $113,000 per unit. Records of the sale have not been made public yet, and Kiser Group brokers Aaron Sklar and Noah Birk, who represented Handler, declined to identify the buyer.
The sale is welcome news for the South Side, where a recent federal raid drew nationwide controversy. Amid an immigration enforcement crackdown in Chicago, federal agents arrested 37 people for a variety of charges at a South Shore apartment building on Sept. 30, leaving residents shaken and local officials questioning the federal government’s tactics.
“That obviously isn’t a great look on the South Side, but there’s a million other buildings where things are going great and the neighborhoods are feeling vibrant,” Birk said.
Handler, who is the namesake behind the University of Illinois Chicago’s Handler Department of Real Estate, was a longtime owner of the portfolio and has been actively buying and selling Chicago multifamily properties throughout the past year.
“He’s probably one of the most-respected operators without a doubt in Chicago, but probably nationally as well,” Sklar said.
Last spring, Handler’s firm TLC Management sold a 136-unit apartment building on the South Side, at 4817 South Drexel Boulevard. Jeremy Bronfman’s Lincoln Avenue Communities snagged the property for $31 million or about $227,000 per unit.
Around the same time, Handler bought a 192-unit property in the northwest suburb of Mount Prospect for $60 million or about $312,000 per unit. Local developer Wingspan Development Group was the seller.
The Hyde Park properties, near the University of Chicago, have 207 studio and one bedroom units and 127,000 square feet. Rents range from about $1,100 to $1,200 for the studios and about $1,400 for the one-bedroom units. The three buildings bring in about $1.7 million in net operating income, according to the listing.
The studio and one-bedroom properties are located at 5326 South Cornell Avenue, 5417-25 South Harper Avenue, 5210-14 South Woodlawn Avenue in Hyde Park and 661 West Sheridan Road and 434 West Wellington Avenue in Lakeview.
When Handler listed the Hyde Park portfolio, he also listed a pair of North Side multifamily buildings at 661 West Sheridan Road and 434 West Wellington Avenue.
Chicago-based J&J Equities bought The West Wellington Avenue building in Lakeview for $10.8 million this August. J&J Equities made the purchase, which came out to about $150,000 per unit, as a part of a 1031 exchange.
The other Lakeview property is under contract, Birk and Sklar said.
Handler’s transactions are part of a busy streak of multifamily sales in Chicago as the market continues to outperform the Sun Belt amid historically low new supply coming online.