Avanti pays $181M for apartment building near Brightline’s MiamiCentral

$503K per unit price is among the highest in recent history

Estate Companies Jeffrey Ardizon, Avanti's Christian Garner, and Estate Companies Robert Suris with Soleste Grand Central
From left: Estate Companies Jeffrey Ardizon, Avanti's Christian Garner, and Estate Companies Robert Suris with Soleste Grand Central (Estate Companies, Avanti)

The Estate Companies sold the Soleste Grand Central apartment building it developed near Brightline’s downtown Miami station for $181 million.

Avanti Residential, a Denver-based investor and owner-operator of multifamily real estate, bought the 18-story, 360-unit building at 218 Northwest Eighth Street, according to the buyer’s news release. The property is in Miami’s Overtown neighborhood and also in an Opportunity Zone.

Still Hunter led the Walker & Dunlop team that represented the seller.

Soleste Grand Central offers studios, and one- to three-bedroom apartments, with monthly rents ranging from $2,139 to $3,960, Apartments.com shows. A fourth-floor deck has a pool and gym, with other building amenities including co-working space with conference rooms and a dog park, the release says.

Estate Companies, based in South Miami, completed the building on a 1-acre site last year, according to property records and the developer’s website. In 2019, Estate and Michael Tillman’s PTM Partners, which partnered on the development of Soleste, scored a $55 million loan from Bank OZK and $18 million in mezzanine financing from Nationwide Real Estate Investments.

The property was 97 percent occupied at the time of sale, according to Estate Managing Principal Robert Suris. He leads the company, along with Principal Jeffrey Ardizon.

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The sale breaks down to $502,778 per unit. Although the sale price is not a record, the price per apartment is on the higher end among South Florida multifamily deals this year, an analysis of reports by The Real Deal shows.

The property is steps from Brightline station’s ParkLine Miami pair of rental towers, which Harbor Group International purchased for more than $400 million in March in a record-setting deal.

Downtown Miami and surrounding areas have been redeveloped with new projects in recent years, including the 27-acre, mixed-use Miami Worldcenter. Hyatt Hotels and Coconut Grove-based Gencom plan to redevelop the James L. Knight Center and next-door hotel with a three-tower hospitality and multifamily complex.

At the same time, South Florida’s multifamily market has prospered from high demand, allowing landlords to increase rents to new heights and prompting investment activity.

Avanti Residential, led by Christian Garner, has been amping up its bet on the market. Over the past year, it paid $105 million for the 500 Ocean apartment complex at 101 South Federal Highway in Boynton Beach, and $102.5 million for the Sanctuary Doral complex at 9400 Northwest 41st Street in Doral.

The Soleste Grand Central deal is in line with Estate’s strategy of building and stabilizing multifamily, and then selling soon thereafter. In August, it sold the Blue Lagoon 7 building at 5479 Northwest Seventh Street in Miami for $93.8 million.