Mesirow Closes One of Calif.’s Biggest Multifamily Deals of the Year
The trade is the fifth-largest single-asset sale in California this year, per Walker & Dunlop.
By Nick Trombola December 10, 2024 3:15 pm
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A Chicago-based financial services company has just closed on one of the biggest multifamily sales across California so far this year.
Mesirow paid $185 million for Preserve at Melrose, a 410-unit property at 1401 North Melrose Drive in the city of Vista, about 42 miles north of Downtown San Diego. The seller, San Diego-based MG Properties, acquired the property in 2017 from Trammell Crow for $134 million.
A Walker & Dunlop Investment Sales team helmed by Managing Director Hunter Combs represented MG in the deal. The sale is the second-largest single-asset deal in the San Diego area, and the fifth-largest in California so far this year, per Walker & Dunlop.
San Diego has been a hotbed for high-dollar multifamily transactions lately, with sales in the region making up 10 percent of all residential sales over $150 million nationwide and 23 percent in California year-to-date, Combs said in a statement.
“San Diego’s market strength is propelled by its historically consistent rent growth, strong fundamentals and high barriers to entry,” Combs said. “The influx of life sciences surrounding University of California San Diego and big tech companies establishing their presence here, in addition to the long-standing defense industry underscores San Diego’s exceptional market resilience and attractiveness for investors.”
A pair of other prominent single-asset deals in the area this year include JRK Property Holdings’ $165 million purchase in July of the Hilton La Jolla Torrey Pines hotel, about 15 miles north of Downtown San Diego, and GID Real Estate Investment’s $167 million buy of the Millennium PQ trophy multifamily building in the city’s Rancho Penasquitos neighborhood that same month.
Another of the state’s biggest sales of the year came in March, when FPA Multifamily paid $186 million deal for Downtown L.A.’s 888 at Grand Hope Park, a 34-story, 525-unit luxury residential tower developed by CIM Group. Like so many other deals around the state since the pandemic, that sale came at a relative discount compared to the $236 million CIM Group originally listed it for the previous summer.
Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.
