Last month Bell Partners announced it had purchased Silverado Apartment Homes, a seventeen-year-old, 492-unit apartment community located in Murrieta, Calif., for which it paid $146.5 million. It now joins the 11 apartment communities in Southern California that the company either owns or manages.

A prodigious buyer and seller of apartment assets over its 50-year history, so far this year Bell Partners has completed $500 million in transactions. In a typical year it will close between $1 billion to $2 billion of deals. This year, says CEO and president Lili Dunn, the company will likely be on the lower end of that range.

That is because, as everyone in the industry knows, 2024 continues to be a difficult environment for transactions of all CRE types including multifamily, which is down about 60% due to capital markets volatility and elevated interest rates. There also remains a price expectation gap between buyers and sellers, Dunn notes. "Sellers are generally looking for a cap rate in the mid to high 4s, while buyers are looking for a cap rate in the low to mid 5s," she says. "So a lot of sellers are refinancing and delaying sales."