McNeil Ranch Community Sold for $21M

By Camelia Bulea, Associate Editor

Preferred Apartment Communities Inc. has grown its multifamily portfolio with 928 new units located in Atlanta, Austin and Raleigh. The Maryland-based real estate investment trust recently closed on the acquisition of three multifamily properties in these cities for a total of $90.8 million.

Called McNeil Ranch, the Austin community consists of 192 rental units and was 97.4 percent occupied at the time of the sale, according to a company’s news release. The multifamily community was completed in 1999. Although the new owner will continue to use the McNeil Ranch name, the Austin rental community will be re-branded as a “Preferred Apartment Community.“

PAC paid about $21 million for the property, or about $110,000 per unit.

The other two multifamily deals included in the 1.08 million-square-foot portfolio are:

• Ashford Park—408 units in Atlanta’s Central Perimeter submarket; purchase price of $39.4 million and an occupancy rate of 93.9 percent
• Lake Cameron—328 units in Apex, N.C.; purchase price of $30.4 million and an occupancy rate of 92.4 percent

Financing for the properties was secured through Prudential Multifamily Mortgage Inc. and Jones Lang LaSalle Operations LLC.

The Austin apartment market continued to show positive signs in the fourth quarter of 2012. According to Marcus & Millichap, vacancy has dipped to its lowest point in over a decade, which resulted into a growing construction pipeline and increased asking rents. The analysts at Marcus & Millichap report that there were nearly 11,000 units under construction with completion dates scheduled through 2014.

Additionally, high demand for rental units due to job growth in the tech sector and limited apartment completions caused vacancy to dip 130 basis points to 4.1 percent in 2012, as illustrated in the chart on the left.

Photo courtesy to https://mcneilranch.com

Charts courtesy of Marcus & Millichap Research Services

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