LAUREL, MD-A workforce multifamily community has traded here for approximately $51,000 per unit. Roseland, NJ-based Villages of Laurel LLC, an affiliate of Geller Associates, purchased the 128-unit property, Villages of Laurel, located at 321 Thomas Dr., from Ross Development and Investment in Bethesda, MD for $6.5 million.CB Richard Ellis’ Washington DC Multi-Housing Investment Team brokered the deal.

The property itself is a physically antiquated 1950s vintage-brick, master-metered product, CBRE’s Mike Muldowney tells GlobeSt.com. Yet it traded at a fairly aggressive price considering the product type and location. Why? It’s simple: Villages of Laurel is less than five miles from Fort Meade, the recipient of nearly 34,000 new jobs due to the Base Realignment and Closure.

This particular asset may not house the people who will be seeking jobs at Fort Mead, Muldowney says, but it will house the people who will be holding down service jobs as a result of the influx. “There are 34,000 jobs coming to Fort Mead. Now can you imagine the restaurants and so on that will be opening up to serve those people? That is what Villages of Laurel will do--take care of those people.”

Investment in multifamily is still very much a tale of two cities once the Beltway recedes, Muldowney says. “We are working on several suburban deals and some are easy to sell and some are not. Those that are easy to sell have an economic story to support them, like BRAC.”