Colorado Real Estate Journal - September 21, 2016
A pair of student housing properties next to the Colorado State University campus sold in a $24 million deal that set a new high-water mark. Catamount Properties Ltd. sold the Carriage House Apartments, a 54-unit, 94-bed property at the southwest corner of the campus, and Pura Vida Place, a 52-unit, 100-bed property at the campus’s north side, for $12 million each. At $127,659 per bed, the price for the Carriage House is a new record for the city of Fort Collins. The buyer was EdR, a real estate investment trust that bought another Fort Collins student housing development, Lokal CSU, for $126,546 per bed last spring. Both Carriage House and Pura Vida are high-end developments that command some of the highest rents per bed in the Fort Collins student housing market, according to Craig Stack, senior vice president at Colliers International, who represented the seller with Colliers’ Bill Morkes. “We were able to build both of these adjacent to campus, which is highly desired in the student housing world by both renters and investors,” said Chuck Bailey, Catamount principal. “Together, they had 194 beds, which made it much more attractive for an institutional real estate investor.” While individual offers were considered, together the properties provide greater operating efficiencies and, therefore, allowed prospective buyers to offer a higher price than the properties might have achieved individually, said Stack. “We had upward of 15 offers. It was very, very well received by the market, and it was a very competitive bidding scenario,” he said. The location, and high-quality design and construction were very attractive to the market, said Stack. “From a buyer’s standpoint, it would be really difficult to replace these developments because land is so scarce in Fort Collins, and particularly adjacent to the campus,” he said. Including Carriage House and Pura Vida, five student housing properties in Fort Collins have traded this year, a high number for the city. “I think it’s a combination of very, very strong demand – there has been an increase in the number of buyers that are seeking student housing – and Fort Collins was historically underserved as far as student housing, so we had properties that were built by merchant developers with the intent of selling them,” said Stack. The 220-unit State on Campus, formerly The Summit on College, and The Grove, a 281-unit property, also changed hands this year. Carriage House, located at 1171 Springfield Drive, consists of one-bedroom, one-bath; two bedroom, two-bath; and three bedroom, three-bath units with full-size washers and dryers, oversized windows, Energy Star appliances and a Craftsman design featuring timber accents, and rough-sawn posts and window headers. Some units have front porches and front doors accessible from the sidewalk, and most have private outdoor balconies or patios. There also is a private, outdoor courtyard with a barbecue grill and builtin stone picnic tables. Pura Vida, completed in 2012 at 518 W. Laurel St., offers similar unit sizes and amenities. It includes two private, outdoor courtyards, also with a barbecue grill and built-in picnic tables, along with two common area study rooms, and community and club rooms with large screen televisions, built-in seating, a foosball table and community library. The communities maintain high occupancy and were 100 percent leased at the time of the sale, Bailey said.