By Jack Stubbs
This week, the sale of the 125-unit Astoria Apartments in Fife is scheduled to close. According to Kidder Mathews, the sale price was $18 million, or approximately $144,000 per unit. The buyer of the property was San Diego, California-based Pathfinder Partners LLC, a real estate management and investment company. Pathfinder acquired the property from FPA Multifamily, a real estate investment company based in San Francisco.
Neither the buyer nor the seller responded to calls for comment about the transaction in time for the publishing of this story. The brokers on the deal were Giovanni Napoli and Philip Assouad of Kidder Mathews.
The Astoria Apartments, located at 5700 23rd Street, was built in 1978 and contains 125 units. The property offers a mix of one-, two- and three-bedroom units, according to the property’s web site. The one-bedroom units total 620 square feet and rent for $1,000, while the two-bedroom units are 840 square feet and rent for $1,320. The largest units total 1,050 square feet and rent for $1,500.
Some of the prominent property features include a new leasing office and fitness and business center. The asset also includes on-site property maintenance and management services and covered parking and some of the in-unit amenities include private balconies, fireplace and an outdoor courtyard.
The apartment complex is roughly six miles to the east of Tacoma and half a mile from Fife. Additionally, the property is approximately eight miles south of Federal Way and one mile from access to Interstate-5.
Founded in 2006, Pathfinder Partners is the sponsor of Pathfinder family of opportunity funds. Pathfinder manages opportunity funds which own and invest in diversified portfolios of real estate assets, as well as two funds targeting “for rent” and “for sale” residential properties, according to the company’s web site. Pathfinder’s target markets include California, Arizona, Colorado, Oregon and Washington.
According to Mitch Siegler, senior managing director and co-founder at Pathfinder, the acquisition of the Astoria Apartments was in line with the company’s overall strategy in the Puget Sound region. “We own a number of properties in Seattle-Tacoma metro region. This property is in the sweet spot for what we’re looking for nowadays, which is value-add Class B apartments that haven’t been updated in awhile and where there’s an opportunity to improve the property and the overall desirability of the asset,” he said.
From 2010 to 2018, the company acquired 107 assets and dispossessed 68 properties. Some of the company’s assets in the Puget Sound region include the 78-unit Redondo Terrace Apartments in Federal Way; the 59-unit Florera Apartments in Seattle; and the 35-unit Hanna Heights Apartments in Tacoma.
FPA Multifamily is a vertically-integrated investment company that since its founding has completed over $10 billion in transactions for over 100,000 units, according to its web site. FPA and its affiliated property management and general contracting companies operate a portfolio of approximately 25,000 apartment units valued at $3.5 billion. FPA was in the news last year. On June 12th, 2017, the company acquired the 93-unit Stinson Apartment Homes in Everett for $16.8 million, or approximately $180,645 per unit.
