By Jack Stubbs
On February 6th, in a transaction that was recently recorded, the Aventine Apartments in Bellevue—located just four blocks east of downtown Bellevue and proximate to Bellevue Square and Downtown Park—sold for $28.9 million, or around $425,000 per unit, King County records show.
The buyer was the Seattle office of Stream Realty Partners, a Dallas, TX-based commercial real estate firm that operates in twelve major markets across the U.S. The seller was Kirkland, WA-based Weidner Apartment Homes, a national owner of multifamily properties that operates extensively throughout the Pacific Northwest market.
The five-story Aventine Apartments, located at 211 112th Ave. NE, is a luxury complex built in 2010 that contains 68 units. The studio, one- and two-bedroom units range from 490 to 1,170 square feet, according to the listing on apartments.com. The controlled-access complex offers on-site maintenance services, an elevator and patios in select units.
Aventine Apartments’ location—in the heart of Bellevue’s downtown core—is one of its primary features, providing residents with convenient access to the various amenities offered in the vicinity. “We designed our luxury apartments as an oasis in the middle of Bellevue’s bustling downtown. When you rent from Aventine, you will love living in the middle of the action with a luxury apartment to call home,” the web site states.
“Downtown Bellevue…has a lot to offer residents. Neighborhoods like Clyde, Eastland, and Kirkland are all at your doorstep and offer a variety of restaurants…locals also love the Bellevue Botanical Garden, Glendale Country Club, Bellevue Arts Museum, Meydenbauer Bay, and Whalers Cove. Bellevue’s Downtown Park is the crown jewel of local parks and recreation spaces and among the best in WA.”
Bellevue’s Central Business District is the site of several in-the-works mixed-use developments underway, with a number of large-scale residential and commercial properties also having traded for sizable sums over the last few weeks.
On February 12th, Denver, CO-based UDR announced as part of its Fourth Quarter 2019 Earnings Report that it would be acquiring the under-development 259-unit Brio apartment complex in Bellevue—located at 11130 Northeast 10th Street—in 2021 for $170 million. The stated transaction price, which would equate to around $656,000 per unit, is an eye-watering figure that adds to a glut of significant transactions throughout the Puget Sound region that have closed over the last few quarters.
In late December 2019, Seattle-based Security Properties spent $163.25 million, or around $410,000 per unit, to acquire the 398-unit Issaquah Anthology Apartments from Scottsdale, Ariz.-based The Wolff Company.
The sale of properties like Issaquah Anthology in further-out areas like Issaquah—in addition to the downtown cores of cities like Seattle and Eastside cities of Bellevue and Kirkland—is a trend that continues to gain steam in terms of wider regional and economic growth.
A fourth quarter 2019 market report released by Marcus and Millichap, for example, emphasized that the suburbs are becoming an increasingly attractive opportunity for investors looking to maximize their returns. The price tag for multifamily properties has increased by 2.2 percent over the past year, averaging about $241,000 per unit. As one notable trend, the brokerage firm predicts that as tech expansion continues throughout the Eastside and employees choose to commute further to increase savings, demographics for suburban multifamily properties—and therefore investor interest—will remain strong in the coming quarters.
