Bleu Lion Trades South Beach Multifamily

MIAMI—Bleu Lion Capital, a local private capital group, just disposed of three South Beach multifamily assets. Bleu Lion sold the assets for $5.5 million. The sale price equals $141,026 per unit or $261 per square foot.

The CBRE Multi-Housing Private Capital Group arranged the sale of three buildings totaling 39-units. The multifamily projects are located at 1348 Drexel Avenue, 1135 8th Street, and 951 Jefferson Avenue. Bar Invest Group, a private capital group based in Miami, FL, snapped up the multifamily properties.

“Multi-housing investment opportunities are highly sought after by domestic and foreign private capital investors,” says Calum Weaver, director of Operations for CBRE's Private Capital Group, who represented Bleu Lion in the transaction.  “Excellent occupancy levels, record rents, positive long-term fundamentals and South Beach's international appeal provide significant investor interest as was the case with this transaction.”

The sale is the fourth multifamily transaction that the CBRE Private Capital Group has completed in Miami Beach in the past 12 months, all of which were to foreign buyers. According to Weaver, pricing is on the rise because there are limited investment opportunities on Miami Beach and a very competitive appetite among investors seeking these opportunities.

Within the last three months, the CBRE Multi-Housing Private Capital Group has closed 10 apartment sales in South Florida on behalf of private investors. Weaver noted that 2012 experienced the highest multifamily sales volume within South Florida in the last five years.

Some of the more aggressive activity has come from foreign and first-time buyers who are diversifying their overall investment portfolios to include a multifamily component. Lenders have loosened criteria to include new apartment investors, with attractive rates in the high-3% range with 75% leverage of purchase price, he says. Positive market fundamentals, attractive new debt solutions and a plethora of domestic and foreign buyers have contributed to significantly higher sale activity.