Bascom NW Buys Overlake Park Apts. for $19M

BELLEVUE, WA-Bascom Northwest Ventures this week closed on the purchase of the 206-unit Overlake Park Apartments here for $19 million. The purchase marks its third local asset and its sixth apartment project in Greater Seattle area.The circa 1978 complex is located on the north side of Highway 520 near the intersection of NE 40th Street and NE 148th Avenue. The asset sits across the street from a northern extension of Microsoft’s world headquarters, which lies mostly south of Highway 520. The unit mix is approximately 40% one-bedroom units and 60% two-bedroom units. Bascom acquisitions director Court Durling tells GlobeSt.com the complex has a vacancy over 20% and all leases are month-to-month. “It’s your standard mismanaged, under-performing asset,” says Durling. “It was an off-market deal that I found just sort of going through properties in the neighborhood, looking for that type of owner and making offers.”In addition to the Microsoft factor, the combination of expensive single-family home pricing and strong school system bodes well for the rental market in Bellevue, Durling says. At 92,524 per unit, he adds that Overlake Park was acquired at a substantial discount to both replacement cost and other recently traded apartment properties in the same area. In December, BRE Properties followed up its summer acquisition of the 226-unit Evergreen Apartments bordering Microsoft’s world headquarters by acquiring the neighboring 197-unit development known as Bellaire Place. The San Francisco-based apartment REIT paid an average of about $145,000 per unit for the two properties, both of which were built in the 1980s and well leased at the time of acquisition.Bascom Northwest, an affiliate of the Irvine, CA-based Bascom Group LLC, has acquired over $160 million worth of value-add apartment properties since it’s inception in late 2003, many of them in the Seattle area. In November, Bascom paid $37 million for the Nettleton, a 351-unit high-rise apartment development at the corner of 8th Avenue and Madison Street in Seattle, two blocks east of Interstate 5. In September, it acquired the 163-unit Kenmore Estates in Kenmore for $10.2 million. In August, it acquired the 240-unit Bellevue Pointe Apartments in Bellevue for $20.7 million. In June, it acquired the 750-unit Waterstone Place Apartments in Federal Way for $49 million.