Blackstone sold a 349-unit apartment complex in Miramar for $121.3 million, a sign that multifamily deals are heating up.
Greensboro, North Carolina-based Bell Partners, through its value-add fund VIII, bought the garden-style community at 11338 Southwest 45th Place, paying $347,564 per unit, according to records and real estate database Vizzda. The buyer borrowed a $73.6 million Fannie Mae loan.
The complex, rebranded Bell Miramar Place, consists of 15 three-story apartment buildings and a pair of garages completed in 2012 on a 17.7-acre site, Vizzda records show. Blackstone, through an affiliate, bought it for $77.7 million in 2017.
Bell Miramar Place offers one- to three-bedroom apartments, with monthly rents starting at $2,058, according to Bell Partners’ website.
New York-based Blackstone is an alternative asset management giant that listed $1.1 trillion of assets under management as of Sept. 30, according to its website. Led by CEO Stephen Schwarzman, the firm has been a hefty multifamily player, including in South Florida. Last year, the firm sold the 394-unit Pinebrook Pointe apartment complex at 3495 Pinewalk Drive in Margate for $93 million. In June, Blackstone bought AIR Communities, a multifamily firm that spun off from Aimco in 2020, in a deal valued at about $10 billion.
In New York, Blackstone is buying a Soho retail portfolio for about $200 million, marking the biggest Manhattan retail investment deal in more than three years.
Bell Partners, led by CEO Lili Dunn, is a multifamily investment and property and construction management firm, its website shows. In 2022, it cashed out of three Broward County multifamily properties. It offloaded The Villas at Ibis Landing at 5851 Holmberg Road in Parkland for $155 million, as well as the adjacent complexes at 11900 Southwest 31st Court and 3040 Southwest 119th Avenue in Miramar for $138 million, combined.
South Florida multifamily investment sales slowed earlier this year and last year, compared to 2021 and 2022. That spree was fueled by unprecedented demand due to an influx of out-of-state residents and record rent hikes. Elevated interest rates, skittish lenders, a slowdown of newcomers to South Florida and rent decreases ended the party.
Many of the deals that closed in the past two years were by buyers that already had closed discretionary funds and needed to deploy the capital, and often relied on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae or insurance company loans that come at better terms than bank financing.
Bell Partners closed its value-add fund VIII last year after securing $1.3 billion in equity from domestic and international investors, the firm announced.
This year, Kushner Companies went under contract to purchase the 28-story, 276-unit Hamilton at 555 Northeast 34th Street in Miami’s Edgewater district for $190 million. Also, crowdfunding mogul Grant Cardone’s Cardone Capital, through affiliated funds, paid more than $200 million for a 382-unit complex at 501 Northeast Fifth Terrace in Fort Lauderdale’s Flagler Village, and a garden-style community with 468 apartments at 9733 Northwest Seventh Circle in Plantation.