RICHFIELD, MN-Dominium has sold the Gateway Portfolio, a two-property, 442-unit apartment portfolio here for $20.3 million. The sale for the properties, Gateway Pointe on 74th Street and Gateway Pointe on 63rd Street, represents a price of $45,948 per unit.

Two local companies purchased the properties, though out-of-state money was chasing the portfolio, according to Jordan Nesvig, a multifamily investment specialist with Marcus & Millichap. The company represented the seller in the deals.

Gateway Pointe on 74th, a 306-unit property with mostly one-bedroom apartments, sold for $14.1 million. The 12-acre property consists of nine three-story buildings along Lyndale Avenue and 74th Street. Marcus & Millichap represented the buyer, @Home Apartments, in the sale.

Christopherson Properties purchased Gateway Pointe on 63rd, with 136 one-bedroom apartments, for $6.2 million. Constructed in 1964, the 4.1-acre property consists of four three-story buildings.

The average rental price for the properties is between $595 and $635 per unit. Nesvig tells GlobeSt.com that the complexes are both about 95% occupied. "It's a good area, a working class market, and there's a lot of apartments in that general area. They're very basic properties, but I think the owner and management did their best to maintain occupancies." The area is a suburb of Minneapolis, where slowing home construction and healthy economic growth will likely support higher housing costs in the near term that will continue to pressure many would-be first-time home buyers to remain in the rental market, according to a first quarter apartment report by Marcus and Millichap. The vacancy rate for the Twin Cities area is about 6%.