Archstone-Smith Gets 336 Units For Nearly $100M

AGOURA HILLS, CA-The Denver-based Archstone-Smith REIT has acquired the 336-unit Oak Creek apartments from the JH Snyder Co. of Los Angeles for $99.6 million, signing the deal while the newly built complex is still in lease-up. The Oak Creek property is one of the first new apartment projects to be developed in Agoura Hills since 1988 and is part of a mixed-use housing, retail hotel and restaurant project called Oak Creek that occupies a 40-acre parcel near the Kanan Road exit of the 101 Freeway. The Archstone-Smith purchase included only the apartment complex and not the other elements of the development. Mary Ann King of the Costa Mesa office of Moran & Co., who brokered the sale on behalf of Snyder along with partner Scott Davis, describes the Oak Creek apartments as “one of the nicest properties I’ve ever been associated with” and “very unusual for this day and age” because of its 24, two-story buildings each situated above a one-level underground parking garage, which puts most of the parking out of sight.”It’s a beautiful campus on a very hilly site where the Snyder Co. maintained 93 out of 100 oak trees that were on the property,” King tells GlobeSt.com. She adds that the complex is also unusual in that few new apartment projects have been built in or around Agoura Hills in recent years, making it extremely popular with buyers who want properties in markets with high barriers to entry. Jerry Snyder of JH Snyder Co. called the project a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to develop a major apartment community in an area that hasn’t allowed any new apartments for 16 years. Many developers before Snyder had tried to get this site entitled and failed, but Snyder won over the city by agreeing to preserve the property’s topography.The complex, straddling Medea Creek, consists of 144 each of one- and two-bedroom units, along with 48 townhomes-style units, with units ranging from 800 sf to 1,300 sf. The new owner will operate the property as Archstone Oak Creek. King notes that multiple buyers were interested in the property, even though it had not yet been broadly marketed, and she cites the price of nearly $300,000 per unit as among the highest paid per unit for suburban Los Angeles apartments.