The Boston Market
The town that was considered the richest in America in the 19th century is the home of 2009's priciest one-off multifamily deal in the U.S. last fall. The $129.5 million purchase of the nine-story, 409-unit Dexter Park in Boston's neighboring Brookline in October came right at the turning point for the multifamily transaction market in and around Beantown.
That sale heralded a new vibrancy in the apartment transaction world in Massachusetts that saw only seven apartment communities worth more than $10 million change hands in all of 2009, tying with 2001 for the fewest apartment communities sold in the first 10 years of this century. On the opposite end of the deal spectrum 27 apartment properties sold in the state in 2007.
The 56-year-old locally-based Hamilton Company acquired the 35-year-old property from UBS Global Management, which sold the asset on behalf of a client in a deal that was arranged by Cushman & Wakefield Executive Directors Simon J. Butler and Biria St. John, who represented the seller and procured the buyer, to whom Butler has sold a couple of deals in the past.
The purchase was partially funded by permanent financing of $89.9 million by Wells Fargo on behalf of Freddie Mac at an interest rate market watchers put at 5.5 percent and a cap rate Butler says was just south of six percent.
"It's very well-located and is the only large-scale apartment community left in Brookline," said Butler, who joined Cushman & Wakefield's Capital Markets Group in October 2006, after leaving CB Richard Ellis New England, where he focused on marketing apartment communities for 12 years.
A lot
