COLUMBIA, MD–The Washington DC-based StoneBridge Investments has acquired Beech's Farm, a 135-apartment community here on behalf of European investors. The property, sold by an entity controlled by McDowell Properties, traded for $25.5 million. The new owner is planning to renovate the units when they turn over.

Stonebridge Investments acquired the property on behalf of its European investors, according to the company. This type of asset offers diversification beyond the Eurozone and its current uncertainty, while also providing more exposure to the US dollar, Managing Director Kees Brüggen explained in a prepared statement.

Beech's Farm as a one-off investment is unlikely to be of interest to a large institutional investors, foreign or domestic — but it would work well with a private foreign investor's portfolio. There has been one example of a foreign investor snapping up small retail assets with high street appeal in recent weeks — a trend that JLL highlighted in a report at the beginning of the year. It noted in that “of the offshore investors who spent in aggregate less than $50 million in 2015, 81.1% of the transactions were private, with the majority focused on primary markets where retail space cannot easily be scaled for larger institutional investors.”

Apartments, it would seem, also fall within these perimeters as well.