DC Team Assembles in Delaware for Luxury Apartment Project

CHRISTIANA, DE—Some familiar faces -- at least to the local DC commercial real estate community -- are working on a luxury apartment project in this Delaware town.

NVCapital Advisors of Vienna, VA, and M-C Development, an affiliate of a Delaware homebuilder, are partnering to build a luxury apartment community here. They purchased the 30-acre site this summer and have begun construction on the project, called Emblem at Christiana. It will be a 245-unit complex with nine buildings.

The first set of units due for occupancy in the spring of 2016. By late 2016, the project is scheduled to be fully delivered.

The project will be constructed by Whiting-Turner and managed by Jefferson Apartment Group, both headquartered in the Washington, DC. PNC Bank is providing construction financing of $30 million and NVC and MCD have provided $12 million in equity.

Besides M-C Development, most of the participants are from the DC area. This is not that unusual -- the region is called Delmarva for a reason.

But increasingly DC-based developers are roving beyond their home base to find better opportunities, which this deal also signifies.

All of the opportunities have been picked over in DC, Peter Lunt, chief investment officer of NVCapital Advisors, tells GlobeSt.com. Secondary and even tertiary markets are where they need to be now if they want to eek out a respectable profit.

That is because land is so much cheaper, Lunt says. The total cost per unit to develop is about the same everywhere but luxury projects can be developed on relatively cheap tracts of land.

NVCapital ordinarily focuses on Washington, DC projects, but has been known to stray outside the metro area as well.

Has it too come to believe that better opportunities are available elsewhere? Well no, says Lunt, although he does agree that it is getting more difficult to find such deals. "I expect we will see more of these opportunities as developers move away from the larger cities," he said.