RISE Properties Trust, a publicly-offered non-traded Canadian REIT focused on the US multifamily sector in the Greater Seattle area, just sold one of its nine properties to a local investor for $11 million, according to public documents. RISE sold it’s Station at Mill Creek apartment community, a 46-unit property located in the Snohomish County town of Mill Creek for $239,130 per unit to an entity associated with Gloria and Jari Williams of Everett.
RISE had owned the property since October of 2013 when it paid $6,857,000 for the complex, or roughly $149,000 per unit. The complex was built in 1991.
The complex offers one- and two-bedroom units, which according to apartments.com are renting between $1,436 to $1,505 for the one-bedroom apartments and $1,740 for the two-bedroom units. According to the web site, there are only two apartments available for rent.
RISE’s most recent purchase in the region was in December of 2016, when the company acquired the 192-unit Artesia by the Lake complex in Everett for $40.4 million, or around $210,416 per unit. The seller was was San Diego-based Fairfield Residential.
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.
