A New York investment firm has raised the bar for Twin Cities apartment sales with an early — and expensive — purchase.
Manhattan-based Investcorp International Realty, a relative newcomer to the Twin Cities apartment market, paid $68 million for Hampshire Hill, a 534-unit apartment complex near Highway 169 and Old Shakopee Road in Bloomington.
That was about $127,435 per unit, and more than $20 million more than what Chicago-based Westdale Investment Partners LLC paid for the complex in 2011. At the time, the property traded for $46.5 million, or $87,079 per unit.
The combined estimated market value of the two parcels that comprise the complex was nearly $50 million, according to Hennepin County property records.
The apartments are scattered among eight three-story buildings that were built in 1986 and 1987 for Healey Ramme Co. The complex was designed by Arvid Elness Architects and built by Kraus-Anderson.
The deal closed on Feb. 19, according to a certificate of real estate value.
The deal is the largest apartment deal so far this year, according to an apartment sale tracker by the Minneapolis office of NAI Everest. The next biggest was the Covington, a 251-unit complex, also in Bloomington. Weidner Apartment Homes of Kirkland, Wash., paid $48.6 million for the property.
Apartment vacancy rates in Bloomington and adjacent suburbs has been relatively low because there's been a dearth of construction in the area. Metrowide, the average vacancy rate was just 3.1 percent.
