CARROLLTON, TX-In a quiet hand-off, Equity Residential Properties Trust has ended a seven-year hold of the 400-unit Dawntree Apartments, selling the Denton County asset to a neighboring owner of 360 units. Comparable complexes in the submarket are selling for $45,000 to $50,000 per unit.

Hendricks & Partners' Dallas team of associate partner Tom Burns and senior investment adviser Jay Gunn facilitated the sale of the 1834 E. Peters Colony Rd. complex. "We made an unsolicited offer," Burns says, citing a chain of events that put the deal on the Chicago-based seller's desk right before the capital market tightened and after the buyer's earnest money went hard.

With the deal now closed, the investment group from Foster City, CA is making plans for a long laundry list of upgrades to the 23.1-acre Dawntree Apartments, including the addition of a fitness center on some open land. The complex, boasting three tennis courts and two swimming pools, is situated right around the corner from Edentree Apartments at 1721 E. Frankford, a class B asset that it bought in May for nearly $17.5 million.

Built in 1982, Dawntree was 95% leased at sale time. Its one- and two-bedroom apartments and lofts range from 600 sf to 1,189 sf or an average of 921 sf. Monthly rent averages $666 or 72 cents per sf. The new owner has brought Devonshire Real Estate & Asset Management Group of Dallas on board to manage it.

Burns says Dawntree's potential surfaced during the review for Edentree, which showed the larger complex was ringing up below-market rents. The buyer's upgrade plan includes making Dawntree's Josey Lane entrance as prominent as the one along East Peters Colony Road. Exterior and interior work will begin in a couple months, according to Burns.

"It will make it a desirable B-plus property," Burns says. "They're going to reposition the property and raise the rents."