Location Ventures sold a luxury co-living building marketed towards University of Miami students.
Records show the company unloaded all 24 of the units in Orduna Court for $14.7 million through an LLC. The condo building is located at 800 South Dixie Highway. The buyer is Orduna Courts LLC, a Delaware Corporation, affiliated with Christian Giraldo and Paola David of Capital Brokers LLC and Cesar Hernandez of Zuma Consulting LLC.
Location CEO Rishi Kapoor transferred a $9.4 million loan to the buying entity, according to records. The original lender was Hunt Mortgage Capital, and the new lender is Orix Real Estate Capital, both Delaware LLCs.
Berkadia represented Location in the sale.
Kapoor bought each of the units in the five-story, 25,000-square-foot building one-by-one during 2017 and 2018, spending a grand total of $7.9 million on the assemblage. His Coral Gables-based company completed a whole-building renovation following the purchase in 2018, Bisnow reported.
The building was converted into a co-living model, providing furnished long-term rentals and extended stays. Short-term guests were required to stay a minimum of 15 days, and long-term rentals at least six months.
Location saw an opportunity to capitalize on much-needed housing for students at the nearby university, but flipping the property was the intended goal when the it was acquired, according to Kapoor.
Kapoor said experimenting with the business model in Orduna Court became the inspiration for his company’s co-living development arm Urbin.
“This was the prototype for everything we’re doing with Urbin,” he said. “We realized we were onto something with the extended stay, then we decided to launch an entire business division around the concept.”
The developer launched the division last fall, selling mostly to investors looking to participate in the lease-back program. Rates for bedrooms in the building’s co-living units started at $1,200, with micro-studios at $1,900.
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Location is setting its sights on scaling Urbin outside of Florida. It raised north of $100 million for its goal of developing 100 branded co-living projects nationwide. Backers include David Martin of Terra and Coastal Construction’s Murphy family.
Co-living offers flexibility and affordability to tenants on the same per-bed strategy utilized by student housing business models. Big investors and real estate players are increasingly attracted to student housing. It’s highly lucrative and the units are in high demand.
Location has had a busy year in Coral Gables. It completed construction of the 39-unit luxury condo Villa Valencia earlier this summer. As of July it was 95 percent sold and had closed more than $100 million in sales.
The developer also got the ok from city commissioners on several regulation changes to a proposed 16-story Coral Gables condo building.