For $3.48M, Copley Buys Newton Asset

NEWTON — Adding another asset to its expanding portfolio, the Copley Group has purchased a three-building, 15-unit apartment complex in the city’s Waban neighborhood, paying $3.48 million to secure 55-75 Wyman St. Dating to the 1940’s the properties were divested by TRC Waban Realty LLC through N A I / H u n n e m a n Commercial Co., and backed by $2.8 million in financing from Century Bank and Trust Co. “They are very nice buildings,” Copley President Norman A. Levenson tells The Real Reporter this week in praising prior owners Diane L. Nix and John E. Nix Jr. They had held the 29,000-sf complex since paying $1.77 million in Sept. 2005, having bought it from family members who had owned the property since the 1960’s. The NAI/Hunneman team orchestrating the sale was led by principal Carl Christie and Vice President Daniel McGee. Levenson says the three-story brick structures will undergo needed upgrades and there will be landscaping improvements in keeping with his firm’s approach when taking on new investments. Copley certainly has been busy in that regard of late. Based in Boston’s Back Bay, the firm acquired a pair of buildings there on Newbury Street from the Mount Vernon Co. in January for $8.8 million and followed that up with a separate deal from the same seller for 254 Newbury St. Levenson says the Newton opportunity was attractive due to the strengths of the 100 percent occupied property itself and the desirable hamlet where it is situated. Besides nearby schools and churches, Waban has a vibrant retail strip, and is close to Newton Center, a Whole Foods Supermarket and Newton Wellesley Hospital. “Everything you need is right there,” says Levenson, while noting the MBTA’s Riverside trolley line to downtown Boston has a stop in Waban for those needing that element.