"In fact, the next closest sale was last year, when JPI sold the Jefferson at Lowry for $51 million," he adds. "So this exploded past that one."

Tim McEntee, JPI's divisional president in Denver, says he thinks he could have sold it for even more if he waited longer to lease it up.

"We got a good price, but we sold it when it was 65% or 66% occupied," McEntee tells GlobeSt.com. "We probably sold it a little early and left some money on the table. But we plan to start construction of 424 units adjacent to it, so we decided to limit our risk in the market and not get too greedy. And this is a pretty huge deal. When you get over $50 million, your buyer pool goes from about 100 to 10."