LIVINGSTON, NJ-Multifamily sales have stayed brisk over the first two months of 2012 in New Jersey’s northern counties, where Gebroe-Hammer Associates is averaging one deal per week. The firm’s brokers recently recorded seven separate transactions, involving a total of 138 units sold for $8.34 million, in Bergen, Essex, Hudson and Union counties.
“Northern New Jersey remains a vastly in-demand, competitive market for multi-family investments because of the region’s sheer number of units and strong occupancy rates that consistently outpace the national average,” says Ken Uranowitz, managing director for Livingston-based Gebroe-Hammer.
Uranowitz said the commuter-hub corridor extending from Union County to Bergen County has had unwavering appeal to locally-based individual investors as well as regional and national companies. In the post-recession era, he adds, “Investors are also competing vigorously for ‘turn-around’ opportunities that allow them to purchase notes at discounts well below the collateral’s market value.”
In the state’s most populous county, Bergen, occupancy rates are consistently running at 98%. “That is contributing toward elevated per-unit prices,” says Greg Pine, a G-H senior vice president who recently completed the $1.985 million sale of a 14-unit complex in Englewood. The property at 17 East Ivy Lane commanded $141,785 per unit.
In the urban markets, trading is very active, according to Gebroe-Hammer brokers. One 25-unit four-story brick building in the heart of East Orange was sold for $1.175 million, says David Oropeza, the executive vice-president who completed the transaction. The building, located close to major highways and shopping, comprises a mix of one- and two-bedroom units. Oropeza, along with market specialists Joseph Brecher and David Jarvis, also orchestrated the $1.275-million sale of a 32-unit building in Orange that has a mix of studio, one- and two-bedroom units and offers on-site parking.
An 18-unit garden apartment complex set in a residential neighborhood of Linden was sold for $1.2 million, with sales associate Gehane Triarsi representing the seller and procuring the buyer. In Jersey City, the 21-unit building at 34 Clifton Place traded for $1.4 million. Sales representative Nicholas Nicolaou arranged the transaction.
During the last several months, Gebroe-Hammer has also handled 10 note sales in its role as the exclusive regional broker for a prominent New York bank. The two most recent sales of properties with non-performing loans were of mixed-use buildings, in Hudson Union counties.
In Union City, the brokerage team of Uranowitz, Scott Callahan, David Jarvis and Nicolaou completed the sale of 19 residential units and a ground-floor retail unit for $825,000. In Elizabeth, Uranowitz and Stephen Tragash, a sales associate, arranged a $480,000 note sale of six commercial and two multi-family units located in the city’s central business district.
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