Colorado Real Estate Journal - May 4, 2016
A San Francisco-based company recently paid $41.8 million for a recently built apartment community in Thornton. The privately held Hamilton Zanze and Co., which owns a $1.5 billion portfolio of apartments in Western states, purchased the 220-unit Highpointe Park at 9701 Pearl St. The property, built in 2013, includes 206,570 total rentable square feet. The sales price was $190,000 per unit. “Like always, we probably had about a dozen very strong offers for it,” said David Potarf, who represented the local seller with fellow CBRE team members Dan Woodward, Matt Barnett and Jake Young. The seller, who asked not be identified, paid $40.75 million for the community in December 2013, according to public records. It was quickly sold by Encore, the developer who completed it in 2013. “Most of the offers, including the winning one, were from the West Coast,” Potarf said. This was not a value-add deal. “It is pretty new construction and it is more of a preservation of wealth asset,” Potarf said. “The buyer was in a 1031 exchange and wanted a nice, safe investment,” he said. The community, on a 7.9-acre site near Interstate 25, has a great location, Potarf said. “It is a relatively new property in a good market in an area that is around a lot of new retail,” Potarf said. “The big thing is that it is a 15- to 20-minute drive from downtown Denver,” Potarf said. “It is a great alternative to downtown living,” he said. “It’s an easy drive to downtown, but it doesn’t have the kind of rents you pay to live downtown,” he added. The average rent per square foot is $1.43, according to Apartment Insights, the database owned and maintained by Cary Bruteig, principal of Apartment Appraisers & Consultants. That is about half the cost of many of the new, luxury apartment buildings opening in and near downtown Denver. Also, the units are bigger than typically found downtown. The average size of a unit is 941 sf, according to Apartment Insights. Hamilton Zanze is bullish on the Front Range apartment market, Potarf said. “They have been active here for a while,” Potarf said. “They have properties from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs.”