South Loop apartment tower trades in largest downtown apartment sale of 2022

A Skokie real estate investment firm and a Dallas firm teamed up to buy a South Loop apartment tower for $180 million, the biggest such deal this year.

American Landmark Properties and Evergreen Residential agreed to buy Alta Roosevelt, the 34-story, 496-unit tower at 801 South Financial Place, Crain’s reported. Atlanta-based Wood Partners, which developed the property, listed the building for sale in February.

Few large multifamily buildings downtown have changed hands recently, making it difficult to value them.The price, equivalent to about $363,000 per unit, or $459 per square foot, was well below the $600 per square foot it would cost to construct a building of the same size.

It was the biggest downtown apartment sale since Chicago landlord Waterton in December paid $209 million, or $344,000 per unit, for The Tides at Lakeshore East.

Alta Roosevelt, opened in 2017, is 95 percent occupied. Rents range from $2,091 a month for a studio to $4,351 for a three-bedroom. Average rents amount to about $3.34 per square foot, up more than 8 percent from a year ago.

American Landmark’s holdings include Schaumburg Towers and the Illinois Science & Technology Park in Skokie. It’s mostly invested in office properties over the years. The firm also owned a stake in the Willis Tower before it was sold to Blackstone Group for $1.3 billion in 2015.

Class A rents in downtown Chicago jumped by almost a fifth in the first quarter to an average of $3.55 a square foot. Just 1,500 apartments became available this year, the lowest in a decade, while the occupancy rate rose to 94.5 percent in the first three months of 2022 from 91.1 percent a year earlier.

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