MONROEVILLE, PA-Holiday Fegnolio Fowler is marketing a 352-unit apartment building here in this suburb about 15 miles east of Pittsburgh. Abacus Capital is the owner of the asset, called Eagle Ridge Apartments, and Mark Popovich, a managing director at HFF, says it should be able to command $75,000 per unit.

Built in 1989, Abacus made several improvements to Eagle Ridge after it acquired the property in 2007. Rents were increased 15%, to $887 per unit, since its purchase of the asset, Popovich says.

Abacus wants to sell now after the improvements and because the firm's management thinks it could get a good return since a new hospital is being built a mile away, Popovich says. He also points out that high-quality, core assets are the ones trading right now.

So far potential buyers from New York City; Washington, DC and Houston have viewed Eagle Ridge. Popovich says he sees a large potential purchaser pool for the asset and says the same complex would cost about $125,000 per unit to build.

"It's very expensive to build," he says of the area's barriers to entry. "There's not a lot of land."