Morgan Properties bought a 300-unit apartment complex near West Palm Beach for nearly $70 million, amid an uptick in South Florida multifamily investment sales.
Conshohoken, Pennsylvania-based Morgan purchased the gated garden-style property at 4860 Sand Stone Lane in unincorporated Palm Beach County from Miami-based Bar Invest Group, according to records and real estate database Vizzda. The deal breaks down to $233,167 per unit.
The buyer paid $69.95 million for the complex and financed it with a $49.9 million Freddie Mac loan.
The complex, called Visions at Willow Pond, consists of 17 two-story and three-story apartment buildings, a clubhouse and one warehouse, Vizzda records show. It was completed in 1986 and 1987 on a 30.4-acre site.
Bar Invest, a major South Florida multifamily landlord, had paid $56.2 million for the property in 2020, according to records. Bar Invest is led by Herve Barbera.
Multifamily investment firm Morgan, led by Mitchell Morgan, has been ramping up its apartment purchases nationwide this year. After it purchased an 11-property portfolio with more than 3,000 apartments in eight states for $501 million in April, its total multifamily holdings topped 100,000 units nationwide.
In August, Morgan reached a deal to purchase a majority stake in Toronto-based publicly traded Dream Residential REIT for $10.80 per share, or about $354 million. After the purchase, which is expected to close by year-end, Dream will go private.
Morgan is considered the largest private multifamily owner in the U.S.
In South Florida, Morgan owns the 180-unit Tuscany Pointe at Somerset Place at 23126 Post Gardens Way near Boca Raton; the 191-unit Savannah Place at 22356 Calibre Court near Boca Raton; the 202-unit Royal St. George at the Villages at 1441 Brandywine Road in West Palm Beach; and Village Place at 2111 Brandywine Road in West Palm Beach, according to the firm’s website.
Several South Florida multifamily investment sales have closed in recent months, after a slowdown during the past two years due to elevated interest rates and more skittish lenders. The tri-county region had become a magnet for newcomers during the pandemic, which had prompted unprecedented apartment demand and record rent growth. The in-migration slowed just as developers also completed a record number of units last year, slowing lease-ups and increasing concessions.
During the pandemic, Palm Beach County apartment investment sales reached $3.8 billion in 2021 and $1.8 billion in 2022, according to data from Avison Young. This dropped to $668 million in 2023 and $1 billion last year. Multifamily investment sales for the first half of this year in the county totaled $120.6 million, the Avison data shows.
Many of the buyers still purchasing are relying on Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae loans, which usually offer better terms than bank financing.
This month, Tishman Speyer paid $124.5 million for the 270-unit Bell at Broken Sound Apartments at 5500 Broken Sound Boulevard Northwest and 950 Northwest Broken Sound Parkway in Boca Raton. The buyer financed the purchase with a $78.4 million Fannie Mae loan.
In July, Brookfield Properties bought the 444-unit Turtle Cove complex at 825 Cotton Bay Drive East in unincorporated Palm Beach County for $107.5 million. The deal was part of Brookfield’s $1.6 billion purchase of a 7,300-unit portfolio of 23 properties from Miami Beach-based Starwood Capital Group.
