Tampa developer sells off garden-style apartments in Riverview for $80 million
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: May 17, 2021

A newly built garden-style apartment community in one of the busiest corners of South Hillsborough County has sold for $80 million.

Wild Grass Apartments, which are on U.S. 301 just south of the Big Bend Road intersection in Riverview, sold to California-based Brooklin Investment Group, according to Hillsborough County property records.

The seller was Tampa-based Second Wave Development, which completed the 321-unit Wildgrass in 2020.

Garden-style apartment buildings are low rises, less than four stories, and have exterior entrances to individual units. The Wildgrass sale — which breaks down to $249,221 per door — is believed to be the highest price per unit ever paid for a garden-style development in Hillsborough County, said Alissa Sieben, senior vice president.

“I think the primary factors are twofold," Sieben said. "First, our focus on the tenant and creating a product that caters to our target market is unique, and that is clearly exhibited from the moment you enter the community. Second, limited supply in the submarket coupled with a swift lease-up during the onset of a pandemic likely makes buyers feel confident in the product."

Wildgrass, which sits on more than 36 acres, is the second low-density apartment complex in the Tampa Bay region to fetch a record-setting price in recent months. Verso Luxury Apartments sold for the highest price per unit in Polk County history in late March, and multifamily experts predict more interest in low-density rentals in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Single-family rental homes are seeing renewed interest from institutional capital and local developers, both of which are pursuing single-family home communities purpose-built as rental properties