Gebroe-Hammer Associates experienced major multifamily investment velocity, it announced Tuesday.
The Livingston-based brokerage firm said in the first three months of 2018, it recorded a total of 23 deals totaling 2,438 units, for a combined $340.54 million. During the quarter, the firm’s multifamily market specialists had the highest concentration of sales in Hudson and Essex counties, it said.
“Millennials and baby boomers, not to mention the Great Recession, have shifted the dynamics of residential living even further toward rentals,” said Ken Uranowitz, president of Gebroe-Hammer. “From a lack of home affordability and family formation, to an aging population exiting single-family home ownership for a maintenance-free easier lifestyle, multi-family properties have remained atop the food chain of real estate investment by attracting record demand for value-add opportunities in cities undergoing a rebirth, properties bridging new construction and pre-1970s product in well-established suburban communities.”
“Regardless of where multi-family assets are located, as long as they are near — and transit accessible to — employment centers like Jersey City, Newark, New York City and Philadelphia, as well as lifestyle services, they are competitively bid upon. Supply is short, and competition is fierce,” Uranowitz said.
In Hudson County, Nicholas Nicolaou, market specialist and senior vice president; Joseph Brecher, executive managing director; Debbie Pomerantz, senior vice president; Eli Herskowitz, sales associate; arranged six separate sales of over 1,400 units in Union City, Hoboken, Jersey City and Bayonne.
“Hudson County is showing it has lasting appeal beyond its waterfront as high-end development creeps inland, rendering existing properties primed for capital improvements and repositioning even more attractive when it comes to both tenants and investors,” Nicolaou said.
In Newark, David Jarvis, executive vice president, represented the seller and procured the buyer in the $50 million sale of 452 multifamily units at the Forest Hill Terrace Apartments.
In neighboring East Orange, at 100 Halstead St., a 26-unit newly constructed, transit-village luxury high rise recently sold for $5.65 million by David Oropeza, executive managing director.
Other notable Gebroe-Hammer Q1 sales:
• 143 units in Bergen and Passaic counties;
• 91 units in South Jersey/Gloucester;
• 65 units in Union County;
• 43 units in Morris and Somerset counties;
• 38 units in Bucks County, Pennsylvania;
• 50 units in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
