HUNTSVILLE, ALA. — Middleburg Communities has broken ground on Mosby Bridge Street, a planned 290-unit multifamily community in Huntsville. The community is situated within a designated Opportunity Zone in Cummings Research Park. Middleburg expects to complete the property in April 2022 with preleasing beginning in May 2021. Once complete, the community will offer one-, two- and three-bedroom floor plans across four four-story buildings. Unit interiors will feature stainless steel Energy Star appliances, granite countertops, balconies, Bluetooth keyless entry and nine-foot ceilings. Communal amenities will include valet trash pickup, package locker concierge, pool, dog park, pet spa and a two-story clubhouse. Cline Design Architects is the designer and Johnson & Associates is the civil engineer. Middleburg is serving as the general contractor and will manage the property.
Alabama
Marcus & Millichap Negotiates $3.4M Sale of New Store Leased to Aldi in Phenix City, Alabama
by Alex Tostado
PHENIX CITY, ALA. — Marcus & Millichap has negotiated the $3.4 million sale of a 21,000-square-foot, Aldi-occupied property in Phenix City. The seller, Halpern Enterprises Inc., delivered the asset earlier this year. The store is located at 3670 Marketplace Drive, six miles northwest of downtown Columbus, Ga. Aldi is occupying the space on a 20-year triple-net lease. Don McMinn of Marcus & Millichap’s Taylor McMinn Group represented the seller in the transaction. Martina Crevecoeur of International Capital Acquisitions represented the buyer, H.H. US Real Estate Phenix City LLC.
BIRMINGHAM, ALA. — Novare Group and Batson-Cook Development Co. (BCDC) will develop a 286-unit multifamily community in Birmingham. The joint venture acquired the 48-acre plot. The existing AT&T operations center is located on the land and will remain there for the immediate future. Phase I will include studio to three-bedroom floor plans. Communal amenities will include a clubroom, coworking space, fitness center, yoga room, pool, grilling area, fire pit, bocce ball court, dog wash area and a dog park. Additionally, residents will have access to covered parking from AT&T’s current seven-story parking garage. Construction is expected to begin in June with completion of Phase I slated for 2022. Flournoy Construction, a subsidiary of Kajima USA and a sister company to BCDC, is the general contractor. Nelson is the architect, Schoel Engineering is the civil engineer and Compass Bank and Cadence Bank provided debt financing for the multifamily community. The new plot is adjacent to 63 acres that Novare acquired last summer. Novare Group will develop a trail system throughout the entire 111-acre site as a recreational amenity and develop single-family homes as well as additional rental residences in the future.
SYLACAUGA, ALA. — Marcus & Millichap has arranged the $12.9 million sale of a 178,420-square-foot Walmart in Sylacauga. The property, which was built in 1996, is double net-leased to Walmart with 11 years remaining on the lease. The asset is located at 41301 U.S. Highway 280, 45 miles southwest of downtown Birmingham. Don McMinn of Marcus & Millichap’s Taylor McMinn Group represented both the buyer, Agree Development, and the seller, RP Payton Park LLC, in the transaction.
By Chad Thomas Hagwood, Hunt Real Estate Capital Thanks to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), forbearance is now one of the biggest buzzwords in multifamily finance. When the FHFA announced at the end of March that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would offer mortgage forbearance to multifamily properties facing hardship as a result of COVID-19, many multifamily owners adopted a wait-and-see attitude. That was the right decision. As April went on, the NMHC Rent Payment Tracker steadily trended higher. By May 13, full or partial rent for the month of May was 87.7 percent collected. But with unemployment spiking to record levels, rent collections through the spring and into the summer will most certainly decline at many properties, causing owners to give those forbearance offers a second look. My advice: if there is anything owners can do to avoid forbearance, they should. While tempting, mortgage forbearance should be considered a last resort. Forbearance could take a reputational toll It’s generally implied that entering into a forbearance agreement will not impact a borrower’s ability to secure financing in the future. In an age that obsessively collects and retrieves data of all sorts, experience — and common sense — suggests that …
HOOVER, ALA. — SRS Real Estate Partners’ National Net Lease Group has negotiated the $18.3 million sale of Shops at Tattersall Park, a fully leased, grocery-anchored shopping center in Hoover. At the time of sale, the property was leased to Publix, Goodwill and regional tenants F45, Clean Juice and a nail boutique. The seller was an undisclosed Florida-based developer that built the property in 2019. Shops at Tattersall is situated within the 78-acre, master-planned Tattersall Park development, which is 12 miles southeast of downtown Birmingham. Matthew Mousavi and Patrick Luther of SRS represented the seller and buyer, a California-based company completing a 1031 exchange, in the transaction.
HUNTSVILLE, ALA. — Transwestern has negotiated the $83 million sale of a 1 million-square-foot, six-property office portfolio in Huntsville. Five of the buildings are situated within Cummings Research Park and the sixth is Regions Center, an 11-story, 154,297-square-foot office tower in downtown Huntsville. The five buildings in Cummings Research Park include Northrop Grumman’s regional headquarters, a 110,275-square-foot building; Intuitive Center I and II, which together comprise 133,967 square feet; Research Place, three one-story buildings comprising 274,657 square feet; and Research Office Park Center, which spans four one-story buildings totaling 121,839 square feet. The portfolio was 97 percent leased at the time of sale to tenants including Northrop Grumman Space & Mission Systems, Regions Bank, Toyota Motor North America Inc. and BAE Systems. Cummings Research Park is home to more than 300 companies and is situated six miles west of downtown Huntsville. John Bell and Kevin Markwordt of Transwestern represented the undisclosed seller in the transaction. The buyer was also not disclosed.
The Birmingham multifamily market demonstrated its evolving strength last year. Continued job growth and limited apartment inventory led to the area reporting its highest occupancy rate in 10 years (94.8 percent) and monthly effective rent advancing 1.8 percent annually to $984 by year-end. In the early months of 2020, we did not see any slowdown in terms of deal volume. Due to rising concerns around market volatility and ongoing impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, we are faced with uncertainty in terms of how the local Birmingham area, along with the rest of the country, will perform in the year ahead. It is difficult to predict market activity, but Birmingham has demonstrated positive trends worth noting. Catching investors’ eyes In recent years, the area’s employment growth and strong fundamentals have piqued investor interest. Out-of-state groups are increasingly venturing into Birmingham. This trend has led local developers to emphasize merchant-builds, actively constructing and redeveloping properties to fill this competitive demand. Off-market transactions have recently seen an increase in frequency as investors are able to be more aggressive on pricing, which is enhanced by this unprecedented interest rate environment. Across all asset classes, the Birmingham market has enticed investors with a variety of …
MOBILE, ALA. — Easterly Government Properties has acquired a 79,212-square-foot outpatient facility leased to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) in Mobile. The facility provides a range of medical and ancillary services, including primary care, mental health services and laboratory services to the approximately 54,000 veterans in the surrounding region. The property was developed in 2018 on a 13-acre campus, five miles west of downtown Mobile. The VA signed a 15-year lease in 2018 that expires in 2033. Further details of the transaction were not disclosed.
HUNTSVILLE, ALA. — Cushman & Wakefield has arranged the $11.8 million sale of Chaney Place, an 80-unit multifamily community in Huntsville. The property offers two- and three-bedroom, townhome-style floor plans averaging 1,350 square feet. The property, which was delivered in 2015, is situated at 1060 Chaney Place Drive, 10 miles south of downtown Huntsville. Craig Hey and Andrew Brown of Cushman & Wakefield represented the seller, Morrison Avenue Capital Partners, in the transaction. Birmingham-based Red Street Investment Co. acquired the property.