Equity Residential Buys DC-Area Apartment Community
HFF marketed the property in Rockville, Md., on behalf of the seller, a partnership of Hanover Co. and Berkshire Residential Investments.
Hanover Shady Grove. Image courtesy of HFF
A 366-unit, transit-oriented apartment community in Rockville, Md., has changed hands with the help of HFF. The company marketed the property on behalf of the seller, Hanover Co. and Berkshire Residential Investments, and also procured Equity Residential as the buyer.
The HFF investment advisory team was led by Walter Coker and Brian Crivella along with Stephen Conley, a licensed Maryland real estate broker.
Hanover Shady Grove, located 9305 Corporate Blvd., was completed in 2016 and has a mix of studio through three-bedroom units averaging 970 square feet. Fifty of the units are affordable. For the market-rate units, rents range from $1,464 to $3,014 per month. The property was 95 percent occupied at closing.
Unit features include gourmet kitchens with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. The apartments also have wood flooring, spa-like baths, high ceilings and in-unit washers and dryers. Community amenities include a resort-style pool and outdoor dining and grilling areas, private media room, Technogym fitness club, executive conference and dining room and catering kitchen. The site also has an on-property Civic Green Park and walking paths. There is a controlled-access parking garage with more than 600 spaces.
A Washington, D.C., suburb, Hanover Shady Grove has access to the Metro’s Red Line via the Shady Grove Metro Station to the east and the commuter rail service, the nearby MARC Brunswick Line, to the southeast. Located within the I-270 Bio Corridor, Rockville is one of the country’s most prominent hubs for medical research, testing and development. The property is adjacent to Interstate 270 and within a mile of Interstate 370/Maryland Route 200, which provides residents access to downtown Rockville, Bethesda, Md., and Washington, D.C., to the south and Gaithersburg, Md., and Germantown, Md., to the north.
Recent Equity Deals
In February, HFF represented a joint venture of The Integral Group LLC and Wanxiang America Real Estate Group, which sold a 274-unit apartment community in Denver to Equity Residential for $110.5 million. The sellers had also developed the Class AA multifamily asset in 2017.
In January, Equity Residential acquired a 131-unit, six-year-old luxury apartment community in the Paulus Hook neighborhood of Jersey City, N.J., from institutional investors advised by J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
Late last month, Equity Residential sold 800 Sixth Ave., a 266-unit property in Manhattan’s NoMad neighborhood to Greystar Real Estate Partners for $249 million, or $902,255 per unit, according to Yardi Matrix data. Built in 2003, the property has a mix of studios, one-bedrooms, two-bedrooms and one penthouse unit that rents for $11,500 a month.
Berkshire Buy
Berkshire Residential has also been active in recent months, purchasing the 191-unit The Parkway Off Central in Blaine, Minn., from Schafer Richardson, which developed the community in 2017. Berkshire plans to rebrand the asset, located at 9436 Ulysses St. NE, as Berkshire Central. It was 94.8 percent leased as of January.
