Equity Residential Acquires Atlanta Community for $122M
This is the firm's second acquisition in the area after exiting the market in 2012.
Novel Upper Westside. Image courtesy of Lee & Associates
Equity Residential is continuing its re-entry into the metro Atlanta area with its acquisition of Novel Upper Westside. The company acquired the 345-unit community in Atlanta’s Upper Westside neighborhood for $122 million. According to Yardi Matrix data, the seller was Crescent Communities.
The new ownership has renamed the apartment community that’s located at 2265 Marietta Blvd. to Luna Upper Westside. According to Yardi Matrix data, the community was built in 2021 and offers studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom floorplans that range in size from 636 to 1,401 square feet.
The community’s amenities include a fitness center, pool, dog park, sky lounge, resident clubroom, coworking spaces, bike storage, lockers, package storage, grilling stations and community beer taps. According to Yardi Matrix data, Luna Upper Westside is currently 78.3 percent occupied.
Crescent Communities broke ground on the 5-acre community in November 2018 as part of the second phase of development at Moores Mill, a mixed-use development that the developer was working on alongside EDENS. The partnership broke ground on the community and 15,000 square feet of new retail space, which would join the existing 45,000-square-foot Publix in Moores Mill. With the second phase of Moores Mill completed, the development pipeline still includes more than 2,000 residential units that will be built as townhomes, single-family homes, apartments and traditional multifamily units.
RE-ENTERING THE ATLANTA MARKET
Equity Residential’s acquisition of Luna Upper Westside is the company’s second recent acquisition in the metro Atlanta area after exiting the market in 2012. Nearly a decade later, the company decided to re-enter the Atlanta market and acquired a 320-unit community in Midtown Atlanta for $115 million in an off-market transaction. Lee & Associates’ Allen Eager represented Equity Residential for the off-market transaction in July as well as the Luna Upper Westside acquisition.
Currently, the company’s overall portfolio includes more than 300 properties totaling nearly 80,000 units. Equity Residential’s portfolio consists of many properties in Boston, New York, Washington, D.C., Seattle, San Francisco and Southern California but the company has been expanding its presence in Denver, Atlanta, Dallas and Austin.
