Downtown Tampa Apartment Complex Sells for Record Per Unit Price
CoStar Market Insights: Multifamily Investors Continue to Pour Money Into Tampa at Feverish Pace

By Staff Report
CoStar
Published: Sep 11, 2019

Novel Riverwalk has sold for $123 million, or a little over $312,000 per unit, in a reflection of investor confidence in the Tampa multifamily sector.

This is the first time a single-asset multifamily property in Central Florida's Downtown Tampa submarket has sold in excess of $300,000 per unit, surpassing that submarket's prior highest per unit sale of The Element in 2017, which traded at $285,000 per home.

The trophy-class, 394-unit Novel Riverwalk apartment community delivered in 2018, achieving a stabilized occupancy in just over one year. The property was purchased by Ohio-based The Connor Group, which plans to rechristen the complex as Anchor Riverwalk.

This sale marks the third property to trade in excess of $300,000 per unit across the entire Tampa metropolitan area since the beginning of 2018. While Novel Riverwalk managed to surpass the roughly $309,000 per unit achieved by The Hermitage earlier this year, it fell quite a bit short of the eye-popping $353,000 per unit price tag from the January 2018 sale of Camden Pier District. Located in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida, the Camden Pier District sale remains the priciest apartment trade ever recorded for the entire Tampa MSA, according to CoStar data.

Surprisingly, the $123 million transaction price only ties for the largest total sales price in 2019. In January, Reserve at Brandon also sold for $123 million. However, Reserve at Brandon is a massive, 982-unit complex, only achieving about one-third of Novel's per-unit price tag.

Investors continue targeting Tampa multifamily properties at unprecedented levels. With more than $2.3 billion in sales volume in 2019, this is the fifth consecutive year posting volume totals above $2 billion. After posting the highest first half sales volume on record, this year is easily on pace to shatter Tampa's annual record of nearly $2.8 billion in annual sales volume.

The surging sales have also driven prices to the highest marks on record. According to CoStar's Market Price Per Unit series, the Tampa MSA's average price per unit now stands at over $142,000. Correspondingly, CoStar's Market Cap Rate series is also showing the lowest on record at 5.7%.

There were no transactions in the Downtown Tampa submarket in 2019 prior to the sale of Novel Riverwalk. However, the Novel trade was so significant that it was singularly large enough to immediately rank this year as the second-highest ever recorded for total sales volume in the submarket.

Sparse investment activity is not unusual for downtown Tampa. Primarily composed of trophy multifamily assets, the area has relatively low liquidity, with most years only witnessing one or two multifamily property trades. This was also the case last year when Skyhouse Channelside, which sold for $90 million, was the only multifamily property to trade in downtown Tampa in all of 2018.