Related Buys Nearly 8,000 Affordable Units Across the Country, LA Included

By Nicholas Rizzi August 3, 2018 5:00 pm

Downtown Los Angeles, home to the Van Nuys Apartment that was part of the sale. Photo: David McNew/Getty Images

Related Companies has closed its $590 million purchase of Denver-based real estate investment trust Aimco’s portfolio of nearly 8,000 affordable housing units across the country, including four properties in Los Angeles, both companies announced.

The portfolio includes 51 properties across 16 states, with the bulk of them in California, a spokeswoman for Related said. The four in Los Angeles are the Van Nuys Apartments in Downtown L.A., South Bay Villas in Compton, Terry Manor in University Park and Casa De Las Hermanita in Boyle Heights, The Real Deal reported.

Other properties include properties in Philadelphia, Austin, Texas, Beacon, N.Y., San Francisco and Baltimore, Md., according to Related.

Related, which first announced plans to buy Aimco’s portfolio in April, said they will keep the properties as affordable housing, fix them up and implement a “preservation plan” for each.

“We have preserved tens of thousands of affordable housing units across the country and have never converted a single unit to market rate—a legacy we plan to continue as we work with other property owners and managers, like Aimco, to provide long-term affordable housing options to the thousands of Americans who call our properties home,” Matthew Finkle, the president of Related’s affordable division, said in a statement.

The sale is part of Aicmo’s exit from the affordable housing market started in 2011 as the company shifts its focus to market-rate multifamily buildings. The company previously sold 21 Harlem buildings to Brooklyn-based E&M Associates in 2014, as Commercial Observer previously reported.

“This transaction redeploys the value of the depleting cash flows of our asset management business into high-quality operating communities with durable cash flows and promising future growth,” John Bezzan, the CIO for AIMCO, said in a statement in April.

After closing costs and paying off the debt on one of its other San Francisco properties, Aimco said it will have $521 million left over from the sale, which it will use to buy properties in Virginia and Philadelphia.