City Development Sells Sunnyvale Apartments for $144 Million

An apartment community in Sunnyvale just sold for $143.5 million in the latest multifamily transaction in the Silicon Valley city.

Singapore-based City Development Limited sold off the 250-unit property at 1250 Lakeside Drive to Essex Property Trust, the Silicon Valley Business Journal and Mercury News reported. The property went up for sale in May and entered into purchase proceedings with the institutional investor last month. Colliers’ Will Matthews, Peter Nicoletti and Mike Kidd facilitated the sale.

City Development Limited invests in offices and hotels well as multifamily properties such as these. The company owned the 1250 Lakeside Apartments through its Millennium & Copthorne Hotels Limited subsidiary. Millennium & Copthorne Hotels built the apartments next to its M Social Hotel Sunnyvale in 2021. It was previously a Four Points by Sheraton property before CDL developed it into a mixed-use project.

The sale allows City Development to “reduce gearing” and “redeploy the capital” associated with the building as part of its firm-wide “agile approach to optimiz[ing] [Millennium & Copthorne Hotels’] portfolio,” company CEO Sherman Kwek said. In addition to the 1250 Lakeside Apartments sale, CDL has also sold hotels in South Korea, U.K. and the U.S. It also sold off the Tanglin Shopping Centre in Singapore and deconsolidated its CDL Hospitality Trust entity to tighten up its portfolio.

The 1250 Lakeside Apartments sit near offices of major tech companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon and Nvidia. Apple has been on a Sunnyvale shopping spree over the past three years, as has semiconductor material manufacturer Applied Materials. In addition to having offices next to the 1250 Lakeside Apartments, Applied Materials has bought up space along East Arques Avenue, with the most recent being an office and research building at 999 East Arques Avenue in July for $25.1 million.

Elsewhere in Sunnyvale, last month, Millrose Properties purchased the former Orchard Supply Hardware at 777 Sunnyvale Saratoga Road for $44.3 million with plans to turn the 5.2-acre site into housing. Sunnyvale city officials have approved plans for 242 residential units at the site, consisting of 162 apartments and 80 townhomes, as well as a two-level parking garage and 2,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space. A month later, Prime Finance acquired the Citra apartments at 745 South Bernardo Avenue for $68.5 million.

— Chris Malone Méndez