FCP buys North Lauderdale apartment complex for $53M 

FCP bought a North Lauderdale apartment complex for $53.1 million, amid an uptick in South Florida multifamily investment sales. 

Boston-based Eaton Vance, an investment management firm owned by Morgan Stanley, sold the 220-unit Avana Cypress Creek Apartments at 1700 South State Road 7, according to records and real estate database Vizzda. FCP assumed the seller’s $29.9 million Fannie Mae loan on the property. 

The purchase breaks down to nearly $242,000 per apartment. 

Robert Given and Zachary Sackley of CBRE represented the seller.

Completed in 2009, Avana Cypress Creek consists of 10 one-story and three-story buildings on 10 acres, records and Vizzda show. Eaton Vance bought the property in 2019 for $46 million. 

Chevy Chase, Maryland-based FCP, which is short for Federal Capital Partners, is a private real estate investment firm that has invested in or financed more than $12.4 billion in assets since it was founded in 1999, according to its website. It’s led by Esko Korhonen, Lacy Rice and Alex Marshall. 

Records show FCP bought the property through an affiliate of its Fund V. FCP closed the $1.2 billion fund in 2021 and started targeting multifamily and commercial real estate, according to a news release issued at the time of the fund’s closing. 

South Florida’s multifamily market experienced a slowdown in investment sales late last year and early this year because of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes. Expensive financing created bid-ask gaps, ending the apartment sale frenzy of 2021 and 2022. 

But this summer, properties started trading again. 

The buyers that are able to enter the market now are firms that will need less debt to finance purchases, namely firms that have already raised equity funds, Newmark’s Hampton Beebe said.  

“They have discretionary equity… that they need to put out,” he said. 

Other firms that would need more debt to finance purchases are now largely gone from the market, leading to less competition for apartments and pushing down prices. 

“If you look at pricing from, call it the first quarter of 2022, we are probably 25 to 30 percent off peak pricing,” Beebe said. 

Among the players left: Harbor Group International, which paid $105.5 million for the Locklyn West Palm apartment complex at 3590 Village Boulevard in West Palm Beach in June. Also, 

Waterton bought the pair of One Plantation rental buildings at 1600-1700 Southwest 78th Avenue in Plantation for $88.4 million in June. 

North Lauderdale hadn’t experienced the recent multifamily investment sales action until now. Prior to FCP’s purchase, the city’s most recent known deal was American Landmark Apartments purchase of The Asher complex at 1949 Cove Lake Road for $60.5 million last August.