Carmel Partners Nabs Nine-Figure Multifamily Deal in Seattle

Carmel Partners has crashed a party of $100 million-plus apartment deals in Seattle.

The San Francisco-based investor led by Ron Zeff paid $121 million for a 289-unit apartment complex at 1501 NW 56th Street, in Ballard, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported. The seller was Chicago-based Equity Residential, its developer.

The deal for the Urbana Apartments works out to $418,685 per unit.

Urbana marks the seventh multifamily complex in Carmel’s portfolio, according to its website. Last June, it bought Chroma in Seattle’s South Lake Union for $92 million.

It also highlights a hot greater Seattle-area multifamily market after a sluggish two years. This year, a handful of deals from Seattle to Bellevue have topped $100 million, according to the Business Journal.

The most recent was Bellevue’s Soma Towers, which sold this month for $192.9 million.

Carmel Partners’ latest investment in Seattle was the eight-story behemoth at 15th Avenue Northwest and Northwest Market Street built by Equity in 2014. It replaced a 44-year-old Denny’s with a peaked Googie roof, despite efforts to preserve it.

The deal for $121 million nearly matches King County’s assessed value of $121.6 million. At the time of purchase, Carmel secured an $80.3 million loan through Fannie Mae.

Brokers Giovanni Napoli, Philip Assouad, Ryan Harmon, Nick Ruggiero and Anthony Palladino of Institutional Property Advisors represented the seller and procured the buyer.

The complex has nearly 30,000 square feet of ground-floor shops and restaurants, including tenants such as anchor Planet Fitness and Five Guys, Papa Johns Pizza and Verizon, according to the Business Journal.

Rents at the two-building Urban Apartments range from $1,616 for a $3,158 a month for studios of more than 400 square feet to two-bedroom flats of 1,150 square feet, according to Apartments.com.

The sale marks Equity’s third since December, totaling nearly $311 million. The developer now owns 36 apartment properties around Seattle, according to its website.

Carmel Partners, founded by Zeff in 1996, focuses on multifamily development, serving markets in Northern and Southern California, Boston, Denver, Hawaii, New York, Seattle and Washington, D.C. As of 2023, it had built more than 50,000 apartments, according to a release.

The firm was tied to a wide-ranging public corruption scandal centered on former Los Angeles City Council member José Huizar, sentenced early last year to 13 years in federal prison after admitting to a pay-to-play scheme for developers in exchange for $1.5 million in bribes.

Huizar pleaded guilty to charges that involved accepting political contributions from Carmel Partners for his wife’s short-lived City Council run during the approval process for the company’s 35-story, 475-unit tower in Downtown L.A.

Carmel Partners agreed to pay a $1.2 million fine to avoid prosecution in connection with the City Hall corruption case, admitting no wrongdoing in the settlement.

— Dana Bartholomew