Gebroe-Hammer Associates announced it has arranged the sale of a Hudson County multifamily portfolio on behalf of the seller, a private investor.
In total, the Gateway Portfolio consisted of 118 buildings, 2,137 units. It was broken out into six seperate packages which sold for a combined total of $372.9 million. The properties are located throughout Jersey City, West New York, North Bergen, Guttenberg and Union City.
“The Gateway Portfolio in its entirety and as separate packages presented an extremely rare multi-family investment opportunity,” said Nicholas Nicolaou, senior vice president at Gebroe-Hammer, who led the arrangement. “It marked the highest concentration of for-sale stabilized assets in Hudson County ever to come to market at a time when asking rents for this apartment submarket are expected to advance upward of 6 percent over the next couple of years.”
The largest of the six packages, which averaged $150,000 per-unit price, sold for $190.65 million. The package included 67 building West New York (47 buildings, 993 units), Jersey City (12 buildings, 175 units), North Bergen (six buildings, 76 units) and Guttenberg (two buildings, 28 units).
The second largest package, which averaged $165,000 per-unit price, sold for $97.021 million. The package included 35 buildings and 588 units throughout Jersey City’s Journal Square and Jersey City Heights neighborhoods.
In both deals, Nicolaou exclusively represented the seller and Joseph Brecher, executive managing director, procured the buyer, Optimum Holdings LLC.
“Jersey City’s urban infill neighborhoods are reaping the benefits, so to speak, of westward expansion that is extending redevelopment further away from the Gold Coast waterfront,” Nicolaou said. “In turn, this is drawing a new post-undergrad millennial tenant pool with two-to-three-year-old professional careers who crave the affordability, transit accessibility and lifestyle of the ‘Brooklyn of New Jersey.’”
Rounding out the sale was another Jersey City/Journal Square deal which sold for $190,000 per-unit; two separate Union City deals, which averaged $140,000 per-unit; and a West New York deal that sold for $15.5 million.
“Each of the properties within the Gateway Portfolio attracted investors because of their potential to yield significant market-rate rent appreciation spurred by neighborhood gentrification as well as implementation of modest-to-extensive value-add capital improvements,” Nicolaou said.
