810 Broadway in Newark — Courtesy: Gebroe-Hammer Associates
By Joshua Burd
An apartment owner has sold a 119-unit portfolio in Essex County for $16.55 million, in one of nearly two dozen third-quarter deals by Gebroe-Hammer Associates.
The brokerage firm, which has completed more than $1.35 billion in sales in 2022, said Executive Vice President David Jarvis represented the unnamed seller of the portfolio and procured the undisclosed buyers for two of the properties, at 66 Olympic Terrace/32 Elmwood Terrace in Irvington and 810 Broadway in Newark. Stephen Tragash, also an executive vice president, secured the unnamed buyer for the third property, at 157 Elmwood Avenue in Irvington.
Floorplans across the portfolio range from studios to three-bedrooms, Gebroe-Hammer said, touting the properties’ immediate access to bus and rail service and highways.
“While there may be a shift in the economy on certain fronts, there is one thing that is certain: the multifamily sector continues to see more stability than other real estate sectors,” said Ken Uranowitz, president of Gebroe-Hammer. “The stars remain aligned for multifamily. The hybrid work schedule now seems to be a more permanent form of employment, interest rates and inflation are contributing to a more precarious environment for would-be first-time homebuyers and the trend is stronger than ever where people want to live in more population-dense areas that provide immediate-neighborhood indoor and outdoor conveniences.”
The disposition is among 79 deals this year by the Livingston-based brokerage team. Its transactions through three quarters span 6,539 units across northern and central New Jersey and the greater Philadelphia region, Gebroe-Hammer said. The firm also cited Moody’s recent Q3 2022 Preliminary Trend Announcement, which found that the national vacancy rate for multifamily properties hit a new five-year low of 4.4 percent at the end of the quarter.
“This is proof-positive that the sector is a bright spot in the overall commercial real estate landscape, with vacancy rates in many New Jersey and Philadelphia MSA submarkets being even lower,” Uranowitz said. “Gebroe-Hammer’s closed deals and pipeline of activity along the New Jersey-Greater Philadelphia MSA-New York State corridor support this level of positivity for multifamily.”
The firm said its third-quarter activity highlighted the revitalization efforts in core urban transit-oriented locations as well as the desirability of Bergen, Hudson, Ocean and Mercer counties. Throughout the state, Gebroe-Hammer is seeing a wave of gut-renovated, new-construction and repositioned asset deliveries to submarkets that have been the focus of years-long master-plan redevelopment initiatives, helping to enhance market fundamentals are being enhanced and spur continued heavy demand for multifamily investments.
“In many of New Jersey’s urban cities, revitalization is in full swing while in others it continues to take shape,” Executive Managing Director David Oropeza said. “All signs are pointing toward future growth and demand, yielding great optimism for what the future holds for each of these submarkets — the majority of which are leveraging their excellent transit connectivity and highway infrastructure to reinvent themselves.”
Gebroe-Hammer’s Q3 multifamily sales in New Jersey included three separate classic garden-apartment communities totaling 1,847 one- and two-bedroom units, which it said are primed for value-add repositioning. The firm also continued its focus in and around Philadelphia, prompting deals such as two trades of garden apartment complexes in Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County.
“More and more, we are seeing that people are interested in a very particular lifestyle,” said Joseph Brecher, also a Gebroe-Hammer executive managing director. “Before the pandemic, where people lived depended on the location of their jobs. Now, thanks to more people working remotely on a regular basis, they’re able to select the location that makes the most sense for affordability and the lifestyle they want to lead.”
