Gaines Investment Trust from Rancho Santa Fe, CA, spent $26.5 million for the 350-unit Ventana Apartments at 14015 N. 94th St. in Scottsdale, then dropped another $18 million to pick up the 380-unit Ridge Apartments at 40th Street and Greenway in Phoenix. Both properties closed on the same day earlier last month, Duane Jones, who brokered the Ventana deal, tells GlobeSt.com.

The pair of apartment complexes marked the trust's first foray into the Phoenix real estate market. Both properties were about 95% occupied at sale time, the realtors said. The group presently holds a large portfolio of property in California.

For Gaines Investment, the Ventana purchase was sheer luck. Jones, with Colliers International's Phoenix office, said the two and three-story property, built in 1993 and 1994, wasn't even on the market when he approached seller, DRA Advisors Inc., of New York, with an offer.

"We approached the owner about selling it and they chose to sell it," Jones said of the deal that gave the new owners a $75,000 per unit, class A property that could very well be worth $90,000 per unit within the next 18 months.

The Ridge Apartments in the Paradise Valley submarket, turned out to be just as good of a deal. "It's a bread-and-butter property," Tyler Anderson, who brought the trust together with seller Archstone Smith, said of the class B, gated apartment complex.

Anderson said the new owners are planning some minor renovations to a clubhouse on the property that could help increase rental values.