BRA Listing 126 Market-Rate Apartments in Newton; Legacy Asset Could Top $44M

NEWTON—The freshest inner suburb apartment listing available for sale is “as big as it gets,” Boston Realty Advisors founding principal Jason S. Weissman declares to therealreporter.com in acknowledging his firm’s exclusive assignment to harvest Woodland Park at Riverside, a 126-unit “trophy quality” property that “has everything (investors) are looking for” in such an opportunity, he insists of the eight-building, cash-flowing complex one observer familiar with the infill property maintains could yield in excess of $350,000 per unit even after turning a half-century old in 2015.

“This is really an irreplaceable property that only rarely comes available,” says Weissman, whose Boston-based brokerage will not even hazard a guess on how aggressive pricing might get, but for a multifamily practice group with a half-billion dollars in sales since its launch in 2012, BRA “couldn’t be more thrilled” in being named exclusive agent and provides a litany of salient attributes for the hype, first and foremost the listing being a transit-oriented development “in every way,” most overtly from being barely 1,000 feet to where the MBTA Green Line’s D train commences, i.e. the Riverside line to Government Center at Boston City Hall after traversing Brookline Village, Longwood Medical Area, Fenway Park and the Back Bay, then connecting directly to the MBTA at Park Street.

But wait, there is more in the transit regard, outlines BRA in citing quick access to Route 128/I-95 and the Massachusetts Turnpike to Boston and western locations. And there are reasons to stick around Woodland Park, they note, in western Newton being fraught with a range of amenities including hotels, restaurants and retail, plus the 510,000-sf Riverside Center first-class office building is directly across the street. Newton Wellesley Hospital is situated nearby as well, collectively elements BRA says has contributed to a nearly 100 percent occupancy of the apartments as Woodland Park at Riverside hits the sales block today minus an asking price but with factors Weissman maintains makes it especially tantalizing.

“The barriers to entry in Newton are incredibly strict for apartments,” he observes, deeming them among the most onerous in the country while offering another rare tidbit. “The entire property is market-rate housing,” Weissman explains, pointing out that much of the apartment product for sale—often borne of a Chapter 40B mandate—has at least 10 percent and nowadays 13 percent affordability requirements.

Not so for the property at 264-290 Grove St. that is comprised of eight brick garden-style buildings totaling 92,225 sf which date to 1965 and were constructed by the client’s family. Unit mix is dominated by 79 two-bedroom, one-bath formats averaging 790 sf, then 31 apartments with one bedroom and one bath averaging 732 sf. The final 16 are studios averaging 494 sf. Because rents are expected to benefit from upgrades to common areas and the apartments themselves, BRA is pitching Woodland Park at Riverside as a value-add opportunity, something Weissman anticipates will further amp up interest.

“There is no comparable product out there right now,” he says. “We do expect the interest will be very intense.” Because of that, BRA passed on an opportunity to handicap pricing, with Weissman opining the elements at play are too dynamic to rein in any estimates. “We will run a full process and let the market determine where it goes,” he says. If it were to attain a rate in the $350,000 sphere, that would equate to a minimum of $44 million. For BRA, however, the lack of any pricing guidance was substituted with other data points to pique prospects such as the three-mile radius whose current household income at a healthy $161,000 is projected to rise to $174,000 by 2021.

“Woodland Park Apartments exemplifies irreplaceable real estate in every sense of the term,” marketing materials put into circulation this morning unveil. BRA, which features co-brokering as part of its platform, has a team on the case led by Weissman himself along with partner Nicholas M. Herz and Associate Kevin Benzinger. Tours are expected to take place in the coming weeks, with no timetable proferred as to a call for offers.

Nicholas Herz

Kevin Benzinger

Jason Weissman