Both Rutherford and Landmark are based in San Francisco. Rutherford is a syndicator with a $1-billion portfolio that has been slowly selling smaller properties and trading up. Landmark owns a few hundred units in San Francisco proper and was looking to reinvest proceeds from a refinancing of his San Francisco properties.

The properties are Marine View Apartments and Shoreline Apartments, both located in Alameda, CA, and Romar Apartments located in Novato, CA. Alameda is located directly across the bay from San Francisco. Novato is located 25 miles north of San Francisco.

Shoreline Apartments, 38 units, sold for $7.4 million or $194,736 per unit. Built in 1961, the property is situated across the street from the San Francisco Bay. The property sold for a 5.4% cap rate on in-place income, the lowest of the group due primarily to its bay views and proximity to the beach.

Marine View Apartments, 65 units, sold for $9.65 million or $148,462 per unit. Built in 1967, it includes studios, one, two and three bedroom floor plans with an average unit size of 778 square feet. The property sold for a 6.1% cap rate on in-place income, according to ARA.

Romar Apartments, located just west of Highway 101, sold for $9,175,000 or $158,190 per unit. Romar was built in two phases, with 42 units completed in 1962 and the additional 12 units added in 1980. All units in this asset have two-bed, two-bath floor plans offering 750 square feet of living space. This property sold for a 6.2% cap rate on in-place income.

The transactions are the first apartment sales in the region since last year. Landmark is expected to close one more small property from Rutherford in the coming weeks when the loan assumption is approved. The brokers involved were John Downing and Craig Chiappone. Chiappone tells GlobeSt.com that the buyer put the properties under contract late last year and that cap rates have since moved up slightly.

"We had eight or nine offers from institutions when the properties first came to market in July but those all fizzled out," he says. "We remarketed the properties in November and found this buyer in December. I don't know if we could replicate [the cap rates] if they came to market today but we could get pretty close to it."