New Seattle Development Authority Buys 1st Property
The new owner is targeting a specific cohort of renters with the acquisition.
Seattle Social Housing Developer has acquired Elara at The Market, a 150-unit apartment community in downtown Seattle, for $60.9 million. The seller was Johnson Development Associates.
The previous owner finished construction of Elara in 2018, and the LEED Gold-certified community is currently 95.3 percent occupied, according to Yardi Matrix data. The property is located at 2134 Western Ave. in the Belltown neighborhood, near Pike Place Market and the newly developed Waterfront Park. The property features a mix of studio, one- and two-bedroom units, each with a private patio or balcony.
Common-area amenities include a fitness center, a clubhouse and 159 parking spaces, which are available for an extra fee.
Dylan Simon, Jerrid Anderson, and JD Fuller of Kidder Mathews’ Simon | Anderson Multifamily Team represented the seller in the deal and sourced the buyer.
Goal-oriented acquisition
SSHD is the public development authority created through the city’s voter-approved Initiative 135. The purchase of Elara at The Market marks the organization’s first property acquisition.
The new authority was created to develop and maintain publicly owned, permanently affordable housing for residents earning between 0 and 120 percent of the area median income. One goal is to offer housing for households that earn too much to qualify for traditional subsidized housing but cannot afford rising market rate rents.
READ ALSO: How Capital, Capacity and Policy Help Affordable Developers
Though the goal is to provide housing for a certain stratum of households, when SSHD takes over a building, current residents aren’t displaced. Targeted households will be able to rent in the building as existing renters turn over, according to the specifications of Initiative 135, which passed in 2023.
Additionally, rental rates at SSHD properties must be dedicated to permanent affordability and set based on the amount needed for operations, maintenance and loan service on the building or development containing the unit. Elara will be leasing to residents who might not otherwise be able to afford to live in this building or neighborhood, SSHD interim CEO Tiffani McCoy said in a statement.
Seattle rents cool a bit, but remain hot
Seattle’s multifamily rents edged down 0.7 percent on a trailing three-month basis through December, to $2,197, according to Yardi Matrix. Nationally, rents didn’t drop that much over the same period (down 0.3 percent), but even so Seattle remains one of the most expensive markets, considering that the national average rent is $1,737.
Despite the pause in rent growth, investors are still interested in the market. Earlier in June, BRIDGE Housing acquired Latitude Apartments, a 108-unit community in the Seattle suburb of Everett, Wash. with plans to turn the market rate property into affordable housing.
In May, Sagard Real Estate acquired Terra @ Monroe, a 222-unit garden-style community in Monroe, Wash. The deal was on behalf of the buyer’s core-plus open-end fund. CEP Multifamily was the seller.
