New Tri-City apartment building sale breaks price record

The sale of one of Richland’s newest apartment buildings has set a new local record at $188,000 per unit.

A Pebble Beach, Calif.-investor paid $17.75 million for the 94-unit apartment project at 575 Columbia Point. 

That amounts to $188,830 per unit, breaking the old record of $180,000, set in March with the sale of Badger Mountain Ranch apartments.

That means investors see the Tri-Cities as a stable market with rising rents and strong occupancy rates, said Timothy Ufkes, a broker with the Seattle office of Marcus & Millichap. 

That in turn helps renters in the long run by encouraging developers to create new projects that boost the inventory of rentals that are available in the market.

The sale was announced this fall and closed in late November, according to Benton County property records.

The price represents a new high in multifamily real estate, said Ufkes.

His team represented the buyer for 575 Columbia, an individual operating as Columbia Point LLC.

575 Columbia opened in 2017 and contains 58 one-bedroom and 36 two-bedroom units. It is 97 percent leased.

The property is cast as an upscale rental, offering luxury touches, views of the neighboring Columbia Point Golf Course and walkable access to Richland’s waterfront amenities.

The seller, Evergreen Housing Development Group, was represented by Portland office of CBRE.

The vacancy rate for one-bedroom apartments in the Tri-Cities fell below 2 percent in the spring, according to the most recent market survey by the University of Washington’s Runstad Department of Real Estate.