Apartment sales in the greater Puget Sound region seem to continue unabated. In another sale that closed on July 12, 2017, San Francisco-based Hamilton Zanze & Company, a multifamily value-add investment organization, sold the 70-unit Quartz Creek Apartments (also known as The Boulders) for $13,425,000, or almost $192,000 per unit, according to public records. The buyer was Bellevue-based Pacific Living Properties, an owner and operator of multifamily communities across Washington and California.
Hamilton Zanze had owned the property since December of 2008, when it purchased the asset for $7.23 million.
The Quartz Creek property is located at 4710 212th St SW in Mountlake Terrace, a northern suburb of Seattle. The apartments were built in 1988 and are in close proximity to US Interstate 5. They feature a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom units with wood-burning fireplaces and in-home washers and dryers. Amenities on the property include a fitness center, sports court and a deluxe playground.
Pacific Living owns twelve properties, including this one, in the north Puget Sound stretching from Bellingham to Bothell.
Seattle-based Apartment Insights, an industry research organization that tracks apartment rental data in the region, tracks rents surging 4.6 percent in the second quarter of 2017 compared to the first quarter of 2017. Over the last year, that increase was at 7.6 percent. According to the report, the average rent across King and Snohomish counties for apartment properties over 50 units is $1,667, which is the first time average rents exceeded $2 per square foot; they’re at $2.01 per square foot. At the same time, vacancy has dropped from 4.66 percent in the first quarter to 4.22 percent in the second quarter, and landlord incentives have shrunk by half from an average of $13 per unit to about $7 per unit.
There are currently 23,572 units under construction, according to the repot. This is about the same as the first quarter of 2017 and 272 units more than a year ago. Fifty-eight percent of these are in the city of Seattle, 24 percent on the Eastside, 9 percent in south King county, and 9 percent in Snohomish county.
There are 11,660 units that have either been built or are under construction for completion in 2017, states the report.
