Broker, investor, and developer Vivian Dimond closed this week on her $102.5 million sale of Hollywood East, a 247-unit apartment building she acquired four years ago as a distressed asset and turned around, The Real Deal has learned.
New York-based GMF Capital bought the 15-story building at 2165 Van Buren Street in Hollywood for about $413,000 per apartment, in an off-market deal.
“It was never on the market, actually, but offers kept coming in,” Dimond told TRD.
Aaron Jungreis, founder of New York-based Rosewood Realty Group, brokered the deal, representing both GMF Capital and the seller, Hollywood East LLC, controlled by an investor group led by Dimond.
Jungreis said he started trying to broker the sale of Hollywood East about a year ago.
“I’ve been working on it for almost a year. I finally found the right buyer,” he said. “We’ve done seven deals in Florida this year, almost $500 million. Everybody loves Florida now…. We have another [multifamily] deal closing next week for $77 million in Gainesville.”
Like other South Florida rental properties, Hollywood East has gained from the in-migration of new residents from states with high state income taxes, said Dimond, the Miami-area managing broker of Brown Harris Stevens.
“A very high percentage of the tenants that we have are from either New York or California,” she said. “Some of the apartments, they were renting them sight unseen, which is something we are not used to in Miami.”
Hollywood East had a 96 percent occupancy rate as of Dec. 15. Monthly rents start at $2,060 for apartments with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, or with one bedroom and a den.
Dimond and her investor group took over the partially built development in 2017, and finished building it last year as a rental apartment project.
The original developer marketed the project as a condominium under its old name, H3 Hollywood, then stopped paying subcontractors, which halted construction of the 15-story building at the 13th floor.
LB Construction of South Florida, the project’s original general contractor, submitted the winning bid for the project’s assets at a foreclosure auction in April 2017. The general contractor made a successful “credit bid” that was $250,000 more than its $15.8 million court judgment for an unpaid lien against Hollywood Station Investments, the original developer.
LB Construction then transferred ownership of the project’s assets to Dimond and her investor group in exchange for her pledge to pay the invoices of 34 unpaid subcontractors.
Dimond also partially reimbursed people who thought they were buying condos at H3 Hollywood and made deposits on 150 units totaling nearly $20 million. Pre-construction prices started at $250,000 per unit.
To make construction financing easier to obtain, she and her investors paid off a first mortgage on the property that had an unpaid balance of $7.3 million.
The $102.5 million payment for Hollywood East hit her bank account Tuesday morning, Dimond said.
“I came a long way,” she said. “And boy, did I earn it.”