An investment group that includes Hall of Fame baseball player George Brett has bought a 160-unit apartment complex in Santa Ana, its second area purchase this year.
The Arbors, a 125,191-square-foot apartment complex at 1000 E. Fairhaven Ave., was recently sold by an affiliate of Carmel Partners Inc., a San Francisco-based real estate investor.
The complex traded hands for about $28 million, or $175,000 per unit, according to Daniel Blackwell, a broker with the Irvine office of Marcus & Millichap Real Estate Investment Services who worked on the deal.
The purchase closed at a capitalization rate—the expected initial return from rents—of about 5.2%.
Carmel Partners, which owns three other apartment complexes in Orange County, paid a reported $18.5 million for The Arbors in mid-2005.
The 44-year-old, two-story complex is about a block south of the Garden Grove (22) Freeway near the intersection of Fairhaven and Grand avenues.
The investment group that recently purchased The Arbors includes Brett, 60, a 13-year All-Star widely considered to be the greatest player ever for the Kansas City Royals. He retired after the 1993 season.
Property records show a family trust tied to Brett buying the complex with other investors and family members, including his brother, Bobby, who also played baseball professionally.
Bobby Brett has served as a partner at a Hermosa Beach-based real estate investment company since the 1970s.
The investment group that recently bought The Arbors has a few other local holdings and has been actively looking for apartment properties in OC, according to Blackwell, who represented the buyers in the sale. Colleague Stewart Weston represented Carmel Partners in the transaction.
“This was a clean, stable deal, which was what they were looking for,” Blackwell said.
CoStar Group Inc. records show the complex being nearly 96% occupied, with monthly rents running from $1,200 to nearly $1,700. Apartments average about 772 square feet.
Records show the buyers getting a $20.6 million loan from JPMorgan Chase Bank to finance the purchase.
Coast Apartments
It’s the second buy the group has made this year. In May, it paid about $8.6 million for a 38-unit complex in Costa Mesa called Coast Apartments.
That property, on 22nd Street near the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway, traded hands for about $227,000 per unit.
The Brett family, in addition to real estate, owns several minor league hockey and baseball teams, including the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes, the Class-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
