After setting a sales volume record in 2017, Twin Cities apartment brokers are off to a strong start.

During the first week of the year, Abacus Capital Group of New York paid $40.9 million for a 158-unit apartment building called Millennium at West End in St. Louis Park. The seller was Aventura, Fla.-based DLC Residential, which developed the project during the fall of 2015. The buyer is listed as AMFP IV Millennium, an entity tied to Abacus.

Millennium is at 5245 Wayzata Blvd. in the West End, which includes a mix of shopping, entertainment and dining. It has more than 381,000 square feet of retail at the southwest corner of I-394 and Hwy. 100.

In December 2014, Duke Realty sold the Shops at West End, the retail portion of the development, to a subsidiary of New York-based American Realty Capital for $117 million.

A year-end report from the Twin Cities office of Colliers International said that year-over-year transaction volume in the Twin Cities metro increased at a rapid rate.

In 2015, apartment sales shattered previous records with more than $1 billion in sales volume, which was almost double the historic average. In 2016, total sales volume exceeded $1.5 billion, and when all sales are tallied, 2017 sales are expected to reach upward of $2 billion.

Here's an excerpt from the report: "In our conversations with both local and national investors, the consensus is that while the Twin Cities market has matured into a truly national marketplace in the past two years, investors suspected it would likely retreat back to historical sales volume. However, the odds that the large uptick in sales volume is a temporary aberration is becoming less likely, given the current data."

The average occupancy rate for apartments in the Twin Cities stood at 97.6 percent, which is just 0.2 percent below a two-year high, the Colliers report said. The average rent increase in the Twin Cities was 3.6 percent, making it among the highest in the nation.

The report predicts that sales activity will continue with "volume remaining high in coming years, irrespective of macro market conditions."

Jim Buchta