Chicago’s multifamily hot streak applies to student housing too.
Blue Vista and Bain Capital sold Vue 53, a 403-bed student housing apartment building with ground-floor retail, to Englewood, New Jersey-based Antheus Capital for $57.6 million, public records show.
A venture led by Chicago-based Blue Vista developed the student housing complex at 1330 East 53rd Street near the University of Chicago in 2015.
Blue Vista, along with its original development partners, Mesa Development and Peak Campus Development, took out a $50 million construction loan in 2015 from Citizens Bank to fund the development, records show. The University of Chicago owns the land and issued a 65-year ground lease to the Vue53 development team when the project began.
Vista and Boston-based Bain later refinanced that debt with a $45 million loan from Argentic in 2023, according to records. It’s unclear what the total development costs were or when Bain joined the ownership group.
Representatives of Blue Vista and Antheus Capital did not return requests for comment. Representatives of Bain Capital declined to comment.
“We have conviction in the University of Chicago student housing market and, as the newest purpose built student housing asset in the submarket, we believe the asset is well positioned,” a Bain spokesperson told The Real Deal when the property was last refinanced.
The property likely benefited from the overall strength of student housing on a national level, as well as some nuances in the local market. Hyde Park has seen growing interest among investors, and Chicago’s multifamily market has thrived across the city and the suburbs.
In the third quarter of the year, multifamily vacancy in Chicago landed at 4.7 percent, well below the U.S. average of 8.4 percent, according to Matthews Real Estate Services.
In October, prolific local investor Stuart Handler sold a longtime portfolio of Hyde Park apartments for $23 million.
And last spring, Handler’s firm, TLC Management, sold a 136-unit apartment building at 4817 South Drexel Boulevard in Hyde Park. Jeremy Bronfman’s Lincoln Avenue Communities snagged the property for $31 million or about $227,000 per unit.