Koret Foundation acquires Peninsula apartments for $48M

The San Francisco-based Koret Foundation has acquired a 102-unit multifamily building on the Peninsula, according to public records. The property was sold by Palo Alto-based Spieker Companies for $48 million, or $470,500 per unit.

The property is located at 849 West Orange Avenue in South San Francisco and covers 83,000 square feet. The apartment building has one- and two-bedroom units ranging from 600 to 1,000 square feet. The units are priced between $2,400 and $3,000 per month. Clubview apartments is across the street from The California Golf Course of San Francisco and five files from the San Bruno Mountain Summit.

The Koret Foundation, a Jewish grant-giving organization, and Spieker Companies were involved in an even larger transaction at the beginning of the year. Spieker paid $106 million for an apartment complex in Sunnyvale, in one of the biggest recent multifamily trades in Silicon Valley. Koret had the building in its portfolio since the 1980s.

While the Sunnyvale deal was on the high end for South Bay multifamily deals, Clubview is along the lines of other deals in terms of its dollar amount. An entity advised by Zurich Insurance’s real estate subsidiary paid $53 million to acquire nearly 100 apartments in Santa Clara. The deal was valued at $576,000 for the 92-unit property.

Another $53 million deal happened in San Jose when Klingbeil Capital Management acquired the Via Reggio Apartments for about $459,000 a unit. In a similar deal, multifamily investment firm Security Properties and affordable housing nonprofit Hearthstone Housing Foundation jointly paid about $41 million to acquire more than 100 units of low-income senior housing.

Richard Spieker, founder of the Spieker Companies, has been in the news regarding ligation for a large South Bay development. Spieker claims that a $2.5 million investment he and his wife, Catherine, made in the development at 5150 El Camino Real was instead used to pay the project developers, Dutchints Development LLC, existing debts and operational expenses. Spieker also claimed that his investment was placed in an unrelated LLC that had no ownership interest in the property. A Dutchins representative said that the lawsuit is settled with “almost all other items resolved.”