Mwest Competes With 15 for K-Town Apartments

LOS ANGELES—MWest Holdings competed with at least 15 other investors before winning the purchase of the Emerald Terrace apartment community between Koreatown and Silverlake. In an earlier story, GlobeSt.com reported that MWest purchased the property for an undisclosed amount from Fairfield Residential. Now, the seller says that the purchase price was $66.5 million in a highly active listing.

"The seller wanted to take advantage of a very hot market," Joe Leon, a managing director at JLL, tells GlobeSt.com. "We had more than 15 offers and 40 tours. It was an extremely active sale. There is such a lack of product in Los Angeles, and as a result, we had very heavy activity. We had several value-add funds that really led the competitive bidding. We also had a lot of REIT interest, but they weren't as aggressive, probably due to the age of the property." Leon represented the buyer and the seller in the transaction, along with JLL SVP Javier Rivera.

Leon says that although the property is older—built in 1971—and has smaller units, its proximity to the very popular Silverlake neighborhood and Downtown Los Angeles really helped attract buyers. "It is a central location, and that is a big part of the K-Town story," says Leon. "It is turning out to be such a central location for Los Angeles if you need to go north to Hollywood or if you need to go to the Westside or downtown. The location is so close to Downtown Los Angeles, where there are 550,000 jobs. That employment base is so strong and everyone wants to be so close because traffic is such a nightmare in L.A.. We are also situated to two metro stops, so the walkability is fantastic."

The property's proximity to Silverlake also drew a lot of interest. MWest president Karl Slovin called the location "the bridge between Koreatown and Silverlake." Silverlake has been an active market for years, and the anchor of the eastside. As a result, the sales team pushed the location during marketing. "Silverlake has popped even more, so we are getting a very strong drafting affect off of that market. At the close of escrow, we were 100% occupied, which is unheard of. Koreatown, you could say, is a more affordable area than Silverlake, where you would pay another $100 per unit or more. That was the benefit to being Silverlake adjacent."

The property was built in 1971, and, as reported earlier, MWest plans to execute a value-add strategy and invest an additional $3 million to $4 million into the property.