San Francisco-based apartment investor Fowler Property Acquisitions LLC is approaching nearly $100 million in purchases in Santa Ana over the past six months.
The investor, which has a Newport Beach office, recently completed the buy of Brentwood Apartment Homes, a 140-unit complex on East Santa Clara Avenue in Santa Ana.
An affiliate of Fowler paid about $27.5 million in a deal brokered by Bruce Furniss, senior vice president for the Newport Beach office of Hendricks-Berkadia’s Apartment Real Estate Advisors division.
Brentwood sold for $196,679 per unit in a transaction that closed at a nearly 5.6% cap rate, according to Furniss.
The purchase comes about six months after Fowler paid $23.4 million for Hearthstone Apartments & Townhomes, a 122-unit apartment complex next to Brentwood.
Fowler Property plans to operate both properties, which are about a block west of the Costa Mesa (55) Freeway, as a 262-unit complex and plans significant upgrades to them, said Furniss, who also worked on the Hearthstone sale.
The Brentwood sale took place about two months after a different affiliate of Fowler paid a reported $41.3 million for Villa Santana, a 240-unit apartment complex on 17th Street in Santa Ana.
The company manages money for endowments, foundations, foreign and domestic pension funds, and high net-worth individuals, according to the company’s website. The firm’s current investment fund is expected to buy about $1.2 billion in multifamily assets.
Auto Lender Expands
Gateway One Lending & Finance, an Anaheim-based automotive finance company, is adding more space for its operations in and out of its hometown.
The company, part of Minnesota-based TCF Financial Corp., signed a 50,000-square-foot lease at 160 N. Riverview Drive, just off the Riverside (91) Freeway in Anaheim Hills.
Gateway One had been occupying about 25,000 square feet at the three-story building, which serves as the company’s headquarters.
The new lease is valued at $5.5 million. Chris Migliori, executive vice president of Daum Commercial Real Estate Service’s Newport Beach office, represented the tenant and landlord, an affiliate of Newport Beach-based Realm Group LLC.
The 75,000-square-foot building, which Realm Group bought in 2011 for a reported $13 million, is now full, Migliori said.
The headquarters expansion comes about two years after Gateway One signed a nearly 40,000-square-foot lease at 175 N. Riverview Drive in Anaheim Hills that it still occupies under an eight-year lease.
The company operates in the indirect auto finance marketplace, working with more than 3,400 dealers in 40 states to provide loans to prime borrowers and borrowers with less-than-perfect credit.
Expansion outside of Orange County includes a new office in Tampa, Fla., where the company recently signed a nearly 21,000-square-foot lease.
Cars to Homes
The local office of Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Taylor Morrison Homes has closed on the purchase of a former auto dealership site in Foothill Ranch where a 72-home project is planned.
CoStar Group Inc. records show the builder paid $9 million for the 7-acre site on Auto Center Drive that previously held a Chevrolet dealership. The sale closed in February and was brokered by Cushman & Wakefield’s Jeff Chiate, Rick Ellison and Todd Martens.
Trumark Homes, working with Irvine-based Macpherson Properties, the site’s former owner, got the longtime commercial site re-entitled for housing development last summer.
Trumark officials said last year that they envisioned the project to include homes as large as 1,910 square feet, with prices from about $490,000 to $550,000.
The site is near the intersection of Bake Parkway and the Foothill (241) Toll Road, and near the recently opened Baker Ranch development in Lake Forest.
A time frame for Taylor Morrison moving ahead on its new Foothill Ranch site, which is next to a 5-acre site where Brookfield Residential has proposed building an additional 151 condominiums, hasn’t been disclosed.
