Off-market Park Place Trade Highlights Petworth's Appeal

WASHINGTON, DC—As we reported yesterday, a source told us that Park Place had traded for $62 million. Today one of the brokers of the deal confirmed the transaction, which closed on Oct. 6, and gave some additional details behind the deal—namely that it was an off-market transaction and that the fundamentals of the Petwork market are intriguing not just to TA Associates, the seller, but other institutional investors as well.

Briefly, Canyon-Johnson Urban Funds sold the 161-unit luxury apartment building, situated on top of the Petworth Metro, for $385,093 per unit, to TA Associates. Randal Howard, Mid-Atlantic regional partner of Moran & Co., represented the seller in the transaction.

One driver behind the deal was the Petworth submarket, which like many urban infill locations within the greater DC area, is experiencing unprecedented renter demand driven primarily by the influx of Millennials seeking residence in the urban core, Howard says.

“Park Place at Petworth Metro is well-located in a submarket that is undergoing a meaningful transformation, and garnering attention from both renters and institutional multifamily investors alike," he says.

This is the second major apartment transaction in the Petworth submarket in just three months by an institutional investor, Howard adds. In July, Principal Financial acquired The Swift, a new 218-unit building one block north of Park Place for $75 million or $344,037 per unit.

"Both transactions confirm that investors remain extremely bullish on the Washington, DC apartment market due to its strength and vitality as evidenced by record levels of absorption topping 13,000 units," he says.

Petworth is also showing its creds as a solid home owner market. Howard notes that it was named the number one US market for home flipping in 2013 with an average gain of $312,400 from a home flip. During that same time period, average gain for a home flip in the greater DC metro was $104,100.