By Jack Stubbs
On Thursday, June 27th, two apartment properties in Seattle sold for a combined $210 million, with the same buyer and seller involved in the transactions.
The buyer, IRP Chroma Apartments LLC, shares the same address as Iconiq Capital, a privately-held real estate investment firm based in San Francisco. The seller was Vancouver, Washington-based Holland Residential.
The Chroma SLU Apartments in South Lake Union sold for $114 million, or approximately $414,545 per unit, while the 209-unit Perry Apartments in First Hill sold for $96 million, or roughly $459,330 per unit, King County records show.
The seven-story Chroma SLU Apartments, located at 1212 Harrison St. and proximate to both South Lake Union and Capitol Hill, was built in 2018 and contains 275 units, according to the property listing on apartments.com. The property offers a mix of one- and two-bedroom units that range from 502 to 1,127 square feet and rent for between $1,845 and $3,625.
According to Holland Residential’s web site, some of the prominent amenities available to residents include a state-of-the-art fitness center, rooftop patio, outdoor lounges and dining areas, and bike stations.
Chroma SLU Apartments also occupies a prominent location in the heart of South Lake Union, within walking distance of some of the city’s technology giants like Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft. The property also offers convenient access to Interstate-5 and is just under two miles from the city’s Central Business District.
The 17-story Perry Apartments, located at 1001 Minor Ave. just below Seattle’s busting Pike/Pine Corridor, was built in 2019 and contains 207 units, according to the property listing on apartments.com. Perry Apartments offers a mix of studio, one- and two-bedroom units that rent for between $2,330 and $4,560 and range in size from 530 and 1,000 square feet.
Founded in 2000, Holland Residential creates and manages luxury apartment communities in key U.S. markets, according to the company’s web site. The property provides a wide array of management services to its residents including on-site personnel and human resources services.
Some of the company’s Seattle assets include the 18-story 236-unit Coppins Well complex in First Hill and Dimension, a 26-story 298-unit luxury apartment complex built in 2014 and located in Belltown. The company also manages properties further afield in the Puget Sound region, with assets in Renton and Issaquah, among other locations.
According to The Registry’s reporting, Holland Residential was last active in the Puget Sound region late last fall. In December 2018, the company spent $44.875 million, or approximately $305,272 per unit, to acquire the 147-unit Saskia at Beardslee Crossing Apartments in Bothell from Gateway Apartments Phase 1B LP.
A seemingly perpetually-active neighborhood with a growing office market, South Lake Union is in the midst of a development renaissance, with several commercial projects in the works and technology companies of all sizes continuing to dominate the area. In mid-April 2019, Seattle-based developer Vulcan Inc’s 11-story, 200,000 square foot project called Block 57 West and located at 300 Dexter Ave. N. was approved by the Design Review board at a second Design Review meeting.
Cupertino, California-based Apple will soon be joining other tech giants in South Lake Union when it moves into Kilroy Realty’s 333 Dexter, a 645,000 square foot project in Seattle’s hot tech submarket. According to several sources in the brokerage community, the technology company in mid-June signed a lease to take over the entire building, and will expand its presence in the market significantly when the development is completed later this year.
Elsewhere in South Lake Union, other up-and-coming technology companies are looking to establish a foothold in what is a dynamic market at present. On June 12th, San Diego-based CommonGrounds—an enterprise-grade Workplace-as-a-Service company that collaborates with office owners and providing flexible co-working solutions to companies across multiple U.S. cities— signed a 10-year lease for 31,781 square feet in South Lake Union’s 100,951 square-foot 1100 Dexter Building.
