CHICAGO—New York-based Atlas Real Estate Partners and its partners Marc Realty Residential and Angelo Gordon recently finalized the sale of 777 South State, their 330-unit student-housing property in Chicago's South Loop, to Bill O'Kane's Group Fox. The partners got $85 million for the 882-bed property, significantly more than the $59 million they paid just two years ago. The big return has to be gratifying considering they endured some initial criticism.

A 2013 story in Crain's quoted Robert Bronstein, president of the Scion Group LLC, a Chicago-based student housing investor, who said the partners' plan to market the tower as a summer housing option for interns or other employees showed they were underestimating “the marketing and turnover costs of what is essentially an extended-stay hotel.”

“The results pretty much speak for themselves,” Arvind Chary, managing principal at Atlas, now tells GlobeSt.com. “We were very confident at the outset that this would be a successful development. When we bought the property, it was only used for nine months each year, so the lack of a summer housing program meant it was not being operated as efficiently as it could.”