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COLORADO REAL ESTATE JOURNAL
— November 19-December 2, 2014
Greater Denver
by John Rebchook
Denver-based MoonStar Invest-
ments planned a condominium
project in the heart of Cheesman
Park in 2010.
Then, the world changed.
“Unfortunately, it was about the
worst time in the world to bring a
condominium
project to the
market,” said
Marc C. Lip-
pitt, a princi-
pal at Unique
P r o p e r t i e s
L L C - T C N
Worldwide.
Scott Shway-
der, alsoaprin-
cipal atUnique
Properties, couldn’t agree more.
“It hit the market just as the
condo market became truly ter-
rible,” Shwayder said.
Instead of selling it as condos,
especially difficult in the Den-
ver area because of the threat of
construction
defect litiga-
tion, Lippitt
and Shway-
der sold the
20-unit Alta
Vera building
at 1284 Down-
ing St. as an
a p a r t m e n t
building.
They sold it
for $7.15 million, or a record price
of $357,500 per unit for a Denver
property.
That bests the previous sales
price record of $332,456 per door
for the Verve apartment tower in
downtown Denver. An apartment
community in Boulder, however,
recently sold for $392,857 per unit.
Of course, Verve was a much
larger sale, with a sales price of
$94.7 million.
Scott Axelrod, principal of
MoonStar, completed Alta Vera in
October 2010, when the condo for-
sale market had cratered.
“I never tried to sell them,”Axel-
rod said. “I probably had three
sales I could have closed, but I
chose not to, because I didn’t want
to end up with a broken condo
project,” in which the majority of
the units were rented, rather than
sold.
In fact, one of the reasons he
moved forward with the develop-
ment in 2009, when the for-sale
market already was suffering,
was because he figured he could
always rent the units.
“I knew, or felt confident, if I
could not sell them, I could rent
them and they would still cash
flow,” he said. “That is what hap-
pened. Then, prices (of apart-
ments) got so high that it made
sense to sell.”
He never dreamed the apart-
ment market would have reached
the record levels it has today.
“I always tell people I try not to
fool myself and look at the market
Alta Vera initially was going to have 20 condos, but was converted to apartments.
Marc Lippitt
Scott Shwayder
Jonathan Stern,
Publisher & Founder
Jennifer Hayes,
Editor
Jill Jamieson-Nichols,
Editor
John Rebchook,
Editor
Kris Oppermann Stern,
Editor
Lori Golightly,
Director of Client Services
Jill Harris,
Circulation Manager
Jennifer White,
Marketing Consultant
Production/Graphic Design:
Jennifer Steidley
Web site
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