Kennedy Wilson’s Complex New Deal

Brian Eisendrath is the vice chairman of the capital markets group at CBRE.

LOS ANGELES—Kennedy Wilson has acquired University Glen, a 386-unit apartment community in Camarillo, CA, for $81 million from an undisclosed seller. The apartment community is adjacent to the California State University Channel Islands, and the acquisition included the assumption of an 82-year leasehold from the school. As part of the transaction, Kennedy Wilson has also forged a public-private partnership with the school in which the school will leaseback 58 units for student housing, 100 units for faculty housing and retail space for the school bookstore.

“It is harder to find yield today, so you have to go outside the box. What Kennedy Wilson did was go outside of the box and created a public-private partnership with the university,” Brian Eisendrath, vice chairman of CBRE capital markets, tells GlobeSt.com. “They got creative and did an extremely complex transaction in an effort to obtain yield that meets their requirements. Today, buying a basic apartment building and doing value-add is becoming tougher and tougher. There is so much capital that is floating into the market, and deals have compressed. A lot of groups couldn’t take on a deal like this because there are too many moving parts.”