$47-million apartment sale signals suddenly 'overheated' market
(Crain's) — Money continues to flow back into the suburban apartment market, this time in Schaumburg, where a local investment firm has agreed to buy a 428-unit property for more than $47 million.
Naperville-based Marquette Cos. has signed a contract to buy the Lakes of Schaumburg from Cornerstone Real Estate Advisors LLC, according to people familiar with the transaction. Cornerstone, a subsidiary of Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co., has owned the complex at 801 Belinder Lane near Interstates 90 and 290 since 1989.
Apartment acquisitions have picked up in recent months amid signs that rents and occupancies are on their way back up and an eagerness among investors to put their capital to work after the credit crisis. Finding good deals is a lot harder than it was just a few months ago.
“The marketplace is a little overheated right now,” says Scott Gould, senior vice-president and director of acquisitions for Benjamin E. Sherman & Sons Inc., a Deerfield-based apartment investor. “It's more of a sellers' market than a buyers' market right now.”
A Marquette executive did not respond to a request for comment, and a Cornerstone spokesman declines to comment.
Marquette has been an active investor and developer in the suburban multifamily market since the mid-1980s, converting some of its apartment properties into condominiums during the boom. More recently, a Marquette affiliate acquired a 248-unit apartment complex and a 1,058-acre development site on Galveston Island in Texas.
Built in 1987 and renovated in 2007, the Lakes of Schaumburg was 96.7% occupied in the first quarter, vs. 89% a year earlier, according to Appraisal Research Counselors, a Chicago-based consulting firm. The average net rent was $1.25 a square foot, vs. $1.32 in first-quarter 2009.
