Blackstone pays $209M for Doral apartments

Deal breaks down to $290K per unit

Doral View with Jonathan Gray, Jorge Perez and Bill Walton
Doral View with Jonathan Gray, Jorge Perez and Bill Walton

Blackstone Group paid $208.75 million for a pair of neighboring apartment complexes in Doral, marking the largest multifamily deal in South Florida so far this year.

The Related Group and Rockpoint Group sold 720 units, split between Doral View at 901 Northwest 97th Avenue and Town Fontainebleau Lakes at 1062 Northwest 87th Avenue. Blackstone paid about $290,000 per apartment.

Cushman & Wakefield’s Robert Given, Troy Ballard, Zachary Sackley, James Quinn and Neal Victor represented Related and Rockpoint, according to a release.

The garden-style communities, which sit on 33 acres just south of the Dolphin Expressway, were built in 2014 and 2016 and are 95 percent leased, Cushman said. They hit the market in February.

Property records show the Doral View site last sold for $20.5 million in 2012 and the Town Fontainebleau Lakes site sold for $19.8 million in 2014.

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The 720 units range from one to three bedrooms and average 954 square feet. Amenities include three resort-style pools, 24-hour fitness centers with yoga and spinning rooms, tennis courts, a jogging trail, business center, cafe and summer kitchens.

The average rent at both properties is about $2,000 a month, according to a Cushman spokesperson. Monthly rents at Doral View range from $1,600 to $2,655 a month, according to Apartments.com. At Town Fontainebleau Lakes, they range from $1,695 to $2,625.

Miami-based Related was a co-developer of CityPlace Doral, a mixed-use retail, residential and office development at 8300 Northwest 36th Street in Doral.

As the Miami condo market has slowed down, Related has ramped up its multifamily and mixed-use development in South Florida and elsewhere outside of the state. In 2017, the company expanded to the Southwestern U.S. to build new apartment projects in Phoenix, Denver, Las Vegas and major Texas markets. And last year, Related and Boston-based Rockpoint announced they were creating a new division within Related to focus on acquiring value-add multifamily properties in Florida and throughout the Sun Belt.

Blackstone, a private equity firm with roughly $512 billion in assets under management, is currently involved in another high-profile sale in South Florida. It’s under contract to sell the waterfront 1,047-room Boca Raton Resort & Club to billionaire Michael Dell’s MSD Partners. The deal, which could topple $1 billion, is expected to close at the end of the second quarter.