Acquiring and Rebranding a 350-Unit Community

By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor

Durham, N.C.—A joint venture of Carroll Organization, a privately held multifamily investor; a W.P. Carey’s non-traded REIT; and Silverpeak Real Estate Partners has acquired Pinnacle Ridge, a 350-unit apartment property in Durham, N.C. Carroll will begin rebranding the property by renaming it Arium Prinnacle Ridge.

Common amenities include a resort-style pool with a sun deck, a 24-hour fitness center, a recently renovated, a business center, laundry facility, lighted tennis court and a racquetball court. The previous owners upgraded interior features in 99 units, and Carroll plans to renovate the remaining 251 units to include stainless steel appliances, resurfaced counters and upgraded plumbing and lighting fixtures.

The property is about two miles from Duke University, and according to the buyers, most of the existing residents are associated with the university as either graduate students or employees. Duke happens to be the second-largest employer in the state, with over 37,000 employees, and the largest in the Triangle market.

Generally, the Triangle—Raleigh-Durham-Cary/Chapel Hill—has been a strong multifamily market, benefitting from the concentration of high-quality jobs in the area. According to Axiometrics, the average rental rate for an apartment in the Raleigh-Cary region increased 2.1 percent in Q3 2014 compared with a year earlier, enough to rank the area at 13th among the 50 largest population markets in the country. Occupancy rates were 95.2 percent, compared to the 94.9 percent in the third quarter of 2013.

This is the second property in the Triangle region acquired by Atlanta-based Carroll Organization in the last two months. All together in 2014, the company purchased 15 multifamily properties valued at more than $615 million.