Published by The Colorado Springs Business Journal | October 26 2012 | Written by Amanda Miller
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| Many older apartment communities are now being bought and flipped for resale. |
Colorado Springs’ apartment sales market seems like it’s hot right now, but the numbers suggest it’s just getting back to “normal” after a sleepy few years.
There have been announcements about big sales, institutional investors and properties selling here and selling there. Vacancy has dropped to 5.8 percent in the third quarter of this year, and rents have climbed 3 percent from 2011 highs to an average $757 a month.
Developers are even building again.
To look at it from the outside in, it seems like the apartment market is on fire. And maybe it will get there, said Doug Carter, an apartment broker with Sperry Van Ness and author of the quarterly Apartment Insights report.
But, so far, 2012 is shaping up to be an average year for apartment sales. There have been 21 sales so far adding up to $130 million. That’s ahead of 2011 year-to-date when there were 16 sales in the first nine months of the year totaling $55 million. Last year ended with 22 total sales.
But through most of the past decade, there has been an average of about two sales a month — 19 to 26 sales a year, Carter said.
In 2008, the last “normal” year for apartment sales in Colorado Springs, there were 18 closings in the first three quarters totaling $155 million. The average sale was $8.6 million for a 120-unit complex. This year the average is $6.1 million for a 120-unit building.
Read the rest of the article on CSBJ.com: http://csbj.com/2012/10/26/apartment-market-returning-to-normal-in-2012/
