Greysteel Tapped to Broker Va. Apartments

By Dees Stribling, Contributing Editor

Dumfries, Va.—The owner of Briarwood Apartments in Dumfries, Va., has tapped the investment brokerage Greysteel to take the property to market. The 70-unit, five-building apartment community, which is near I-95, comes with a 6.2-acre parcel that’s been approved for an additional 73 units. Dumfries is a town in Prince William County near the Potomac River, and is part of metro D.C.

The property was to have been converted to condos back in the 2000s. Conversion started in 2006, but before condo-finish upgrades could be completed on all of the units, the recession put the kibosh on the plans, and the community remained a rental property.

A legacy of the stalled conversion plans remains, however: 14 of the 70 units were renovated to condo-grade finishes before the plans were scraped, including the installation of washers and dryers in the units. According to Greysteel, those units now command a weighted average rent premium of $127- $137 for one-bedroom units, $74 for two-bedroom units and $171 for three-bedroom units, pointing to the potential upside for a buyer who upgrades the unmodified units.

Prince William County has seen considerable job growth in recent years, and thus heightened demand for multifamily properties. Over the last decade, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment in the county has growth 37 percent, adding more than 2,700 jobs per annum since the early 2000s.

Ari Firoozabadi, John Mullen, W. Kyle Tangney, Caleb Brown, and Lance Ahmadian are the agents for the property. Washington, D.C.-based Greysteel has brokered the sale of a number of multifamily properties recently, including the sale of 7611 and 7701 Georgia Ave. NW, a two-building midrise portfolio in the District containing 92 apartments and one ground-floor retail unit. It also brokers other kinds of properties—not long ago, the company listed the Embassy of Georgia building at 2209 Massachusetts Ave. NW.