Marquette Companies buys Orion Arlington Lakes for $46M

Marquette Companies is joining in on the action as the Chicago suburbs’ multifamily market extends its hot streak.

Naperville-based Marquette bought the 198-unit Arlington Lakes Apartments from Deerfield-based Orion Residential for $46 million. The deal came out to just over $232,000 per unit. Though it’s unclear what Orion’s total investment in the complex was, the firm took over the apartments via a quit claim deed in 2018 and took out a $27.9 mortgage against the property.

The sale of the property at 909 East Golf Road in Arlington Heights was also the result of the companies’ recent partnership. Marquette and Orion announced earlier this month that the two firms would join some of their operations and that Orion executive Dan Gumbiner would serve as an adviser while Orion’s senior vice president of asset management, Cheryl Charnas, would join Marquette’s asset management team as executive vice president.

Now that Marquette has purchased the Orion Arlington Lakes Apartments at 917 West Golf Road, the firm will step in as property manager, perform renovations and rebrand the property to Avery at Arlington Lakes.

The spreadout, 1985-built complex of garden style units has been consistently 97 percent occupied, said Jim Cunningham, president of Marquette Management.

Chicagoland’s multifamily market has been performing well all year because the city didn’t experience the same Covid-era building boom that caught on in some cities in the southeast and Sun Belt.

A steady job market and low supply of new construction has drawn investors, especially in the suburbs where they don’t have to contend with Chicago’s political environment. But the Arlington Heights property still faces the downside of dealing with Cook County’s unpredictable property tax system.

As a result, suburban properties bordering Cook County have seen the most interest and that has recently extended to more buyers looking at outer ring suburbs as well.

Multifamily sales in the suburbs were up 40 percent year-over-year in the third quarter, Chicago-based brokerage Interra Realty found, and a few outer ring counties stood out in the competitive field.

Out of the metro area’s total multifamily sales, the share of sales that took place in Kendall County was up 300 percent, and a whopping 550 percent in Will County, compared to the same time period last year, according to new analysis from Interra.