Announcing the sale of 424 Apartments

We closed the sale of a 15 unit apartment building yesterday. It is a great example of how a fairly priced, decent condition building can fair in todays market.

This is a building built in 1963 and while it did not have any real deferred maintenance neither was it some renovated jewel-case. It was simply an average condition building with average size units in the North Capitol Hill neighborhood in the middle of a decent block with about 50% parking. In other words, nothing special.

As usual when we market a property we immediately broadly marketed the building, putting it into CBA, on our web site, and generally co-brokering with any and all interested agents. Within about a week we had five offers, several of them at the asking price. The top offer came from an out of town buyer who offered to complete due diligence within five days and close all cash within 21 days. A truly extraordinary offer.

The impetus for this property coming to market was an unsolicited offer that was for $225,000 less than we were able to get by actually bringing the deal into the light of the open marketplace, despite assurances from the agent representing the offer that the seller could never do better.

In the end, the property traded for $140,000 per unit, $215 per foot, 12 times the gross rents, and a 5.19 CAP. Certainly no steal but evidence of how a property priced decently and broadly marketed can attract a lot of attention and find the needle in the haystack, the buyer willing to do better than the rest.