2116 Chestnut high-rise being sold for $160M

The luxury high-rise rental building 2116 Chestnut, which opened for tenants two years ago, is being sold for about $160 million.

Although HFF, the real estate capital broker, acknowledged that it was handling the transaction, a spokeswoman at its Conshohocken office said there would be no announcement until the sale closed, and did not say when that would be.

The buyer, sources said, is CBRE Global Investors, which did not respond Friday to a request for comment. The seller, John Buck Co., of Chicago, also did not respond to the same request.

The sale price for the 34-story, 321-unit building at 22d and Chestnut Streets, built by Buck in its first foray into the Philadelphia market, is expected to be $160 million, sources said. This would put the effective sale price per unit at nearly $500,000.

The units have been renting for $1,790 to $3,686 a month.

The high-rise was built between 2011 and 2013, and cost $100 million. The Indure Fund, a union-backed real estate investment fund managed by National Real Estate Advisors, partnered with Buck on the project. The state also provided about $10 million in assistance.

The for-sale market in Philadelphia, especially in Center City and adjacent neighborhoods, experienced its best second quarter in nearly a decade this year, and the luxury rental apartment remains hot.

William Rich of Delta Associates, of Washington, which tracks the rental market, said the apartment vacancy rate in the city fell to 1.6 percent in the second quarter from 5 percent a year earlier. This occurred even while competition in the market, especially in Center City, continued to increase, Rich said.

Effective rents -- minus concessions and allowances -- rose 4 percent in the same 12 months, he said, to an average of $2,226 a month for high-end high-rise units.

Source: Philly.com