Crow Holdings picked up a 376-unit apartment complex in Davie for $97.5 million, marking a pickup of multifamily investment sales in South Florida.
Dallas-based Crow bought the 33 West property at 6300 Southwest 24th Place from New York-based commercial real estate investment manager Clarion Partners, according to records and real estate database Vizzda. The deal breaks down to $259,308 per unit.
Completed in 2013, 33 West consists of 14 three-story buildings and a pair of one-story
Buildings on a 15.5-acre site, Vizzda records show. Yonkers, New York-based AVR Realty Company, through an affiliate, bought the complex for $78.8 million in 2014.
Led by David Gilbert, Clarion took ownership of 33 West by acquiring the interest in AVR Realty’s entity in 2018, according to state corporate records. Clarion’s purchase price is unknown because no deed was recorded at the time.
33 West consists of one-bedroom to three-bedroom units, with monthly rents ranging from $2,105 to $2,767, according to its website.
Led by Michael Levy, Crow Holdings is a real estate investment and development firm established more than 75 years ago by the late Trammell Crow. It has multiple subsidiaries, many of them frequent South Florida investors.
Last year, Trammell Crow Residential, Crow’s multifamily development arm, sold the 250-unit Solena Miramar apartment complex it had developed at 3155 Southwest 147th Terrace in Miramar to FCP for $67.5 million. In 2023, Trammell Crow Residential and Carlyle sold the 368-unit Casero Apartments they had developed at 8255 Park Boulevard in unincorporated Miami-Dade County to Stockbridge for $156 million. It marked the second largest multifamily deal in South Florida in 2023.
South Florida multifamily investment sales declined in the past two years after the boom years of the pandemic. From late 2020 through 2022, the tri-county region became a magnet for out-of-staters due to its early lifting of the lockdown, lack of state income tax and warm climate. This created unprecedented apartment demand, record rent growth and an investment sales flurry.
Since 2022, elevated interest rates, a slowdown of the influx of residents and a plateauing of rents, including rate declines in some submarkets, have slowed investment sales.
Broward County recorded $5.3 billion in multifamily investment sales in 2021 and $3.2 billion in 2022, according to data provided by Avison Young. This dropped to $1.2 billion in 2023 and $2.1 billion last year.
Some of the biggest recent purchases have been all-cash, as investors try to avoid the higher interest rates. Spanish billionaire Amancio Ortega’s Ponte Gadea paid $165 million for the 44-story, 259-unit Veneto Las Olas apartment tower at 201 South Federal Highway in downtown Fort Lauderdale last month.
Others are turning to agency loans. Last month, Greenwood Village, Colorado-based Griffis Residential bought the 15-story, 223-unit apartment tower at 345 Banyan Boulevard in West Palm Beach for $87 million. The buyer took out a $57.7 million Freddie Mac loan for the deal.
Crow Holdings also didn’t record a mortgage for its 33 West purchase, meaning the deal could have been all cash.
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