Archstone Buys Washington State, California Properties

By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor

Kirkland, Wash.—The multifamily giant Archstone has acquired a 131-unit apartment complex in Kirkland, Wash., a Seattle suburb. The property is located in the Lakeview neighborhood, which is in the southern part of the town along Lake Washington. It sold for about $47.5 million and will be renamed Archstone Kirkland at Carillon Point.

The apartments are on a hillside overlooking Lake Washington and Carillon Point, a view of which—along with the Seattle skyline—forms one of the amenities offered by some of the units. Archstone will finish the upgrading the units that were not upgraded during a previous partial renovation, fitting them with new kitchen cabinets and countertops, new light fixtures and upgraded fireplaces and mantels.

The seller is an affiliate of Continental Properties LLC and was represented in the sale by Jon Hallgrimson and Frank Bosl with CBRE. CBRE’s multifamily finance division, led by Brian Eisendrath, executive vice president, arranged the financing. Archstone is no stranger to the area, since it already owns 11 nearby apartment complexes totaling over 3,300 units.

In a separate transaction at about the same time, Archstone also acquired Parkside Apartment Homes in Sunnyvale, Calif., for $63.2 million. As is its wont, the company will also be renaming the 192-unit property in Silicon Valley; going forward, it will be Archstone Sunnyvale. The company now owns 23 apartment complexes totaling about 8,200 units in the San Francisco Bay Area.

As far as corporate headquarters go, Archstone Sunnyvale has a charmed location, according to Archstone. The corporate headquarters for Apple, Google, Cisco and Intel are all within five miles of Archstone Sunnyvale. Other major employers within a short distance of the property include Lockheed Martin, Yahoo, eBay, Netflix, Hewlett Packard and Adobe Systems.