Newmark announced it has arranged the sale of University Commons, a 127-unit multifamily property at 3450 W. Missouri Avenue directly across from Grand Canyon University in Phoenix, Arizona. The asset sold for $13 million.

Newmark’s Executive Managing Director Brad Goff, Senior Managing Director Brett Polachek and Director Chris Canter represented the seller, Terra Vista Investments, in the transaction to California-based CALCAP Advisors.

“University Commons is ideally located and in proximity to GCU, which continues to invest in its campus along with the improving submarket,” stated Polachek. “Buyer interest for properties of similar vintage with units that are primed for upgrades remains high.”

University Commons is located directly across the street from the booming GCU. Over the past 10 years, the University’s 300-acre campus has undergone a $1.2 billion-dollar investment in technologies, infrastructure and expansion, providing a tremendous benefit to the local submarket through added employment, educational opportunities and a sharp increase in rents and values.

Among the new facilities at GCU in recent years are the Colangelo College of Business Building, new Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Building, Student Life Building, Canyon Activity Center, a new four-story office building, a new GCU hotel and restaurant and several large high rise-parking garages. The campus enrollment in 2014 was 8,500 students and the current enrollment has now surpassed 24,000 students. GCU’s 5-year forecast for enrollment is to grow to over 30,000 students and it plans to expand the 300-acre campus to 400 acres.

The property presents ease of access to major street thoroughfares like Camelback Road, 35th Avenue and Bethany Home Road as well as the I-17 freeway and US-60 which provides residents with the ease of a short commute to several prominent job centers – the Camelback Corridor, the North Central Avenue Business District and Downtown Phoenix – which are all minutes away.

University Commons was originally built in in 1983, and recently underwent renovations to a handful of unit interiors to modernize. 32 percent of the units are untouched and provide the new investor with the opportunity to continue the renovation project and boost the NOI immediately. According to the Newmark team, sales of apartment properties have increased as the year has progressed out of the summer months and the momentum of pent up demand will continue in 2021.

CALCAP Advisors is a real estate investment company founded in 2008 and headquartered in Pasadena, California. They sponsor alternative real estate investment opportunities for individual and institutional investors.

The seller is a private partnership out of Vancouver, Canada.