AMLI Residential Sticks With Strategy of Selling Older Properties

CHICAGO-The average age of AMLI Residential’s portfolio was eight years old when the REIT went public in 1994, and the age has since fallen to 6.25 years. The multifamily REIT plans to continue that trend in 2001.

“We will continue to get younger rather than older,” president and Co-CEO Allan J. Sweet says. “It is our intention to keep our portfolio relatively young.” That means targeted dispositions of its higher quality apartment communities, but finding the targets may not be easy.

AMLI has nine properties in this market, five of them at least 10 years old. The oldest, 196-unit AMLI at Poplar Creek in northwest suburban Schaumburg, was built in 1985. Its longest-term holding is 236-unit AMLI and Windbrooke in north suburban Buffalo Grove, built in 1987 and in AMLI’s portfolio since 1995. “Chicago is a little unique,” Sweet said in a conference call. “Some of those assets are very, very dynamic properties. I don’t think it’s fair to assume they’re all targets.”