Cortland Partners Buys Atlanta, DFW Apartment Properties

By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor

Atlanta—Cortland Partners has acquired a portfolio of multifamily properties totaling 2,237 units in a series of transactions worth $244 million. Four of the properties are in Cortland’s home market of metro Atlanta, with another in greater Dallas-Fort Worth.

The Atlanta properties include Idlewylde, which is in the Duluth area of Atlanta and totals 843 units, the largest of the five properties. The buyer plans to operate it as two separate properties, which is consistent with its original development of the two-phased community. The seller was Associated Estates, a REIT.

The other Atlanta properties are the 406-unit Promenade at Peachtree in the Brookhaven/Chamblee neighborhood, the 360-unit Lexington Farms in Alpharetta and Longwood in the Decatur area, which has 268 units. The seller in all of those deals was another REIT, Equity Residential. The lone DFW property is the 360-unit Coventry at Cityview in Fort Worth.

Debt capital for the deals was provided by Freddie Mac through Walker Dunlop for $75.85 million, and through a loan commitment led by Ares Commercial Real Estate Corp. for $107.1 million. Equity was provided two institutional capital partners.

Cortland has been an aggressive apartment buyer recently, expanding its holdings from about 1,900 units to nearly 13,000 units during the past three years. The company, which characterizes its strategy as one of pursuing value-add deals, plans to invest in various interior and exterior upgrades in its latest acquisitions.