Hudson Valley Buys South Side Multifamily Portfolio for $28M

A California investor has cashed in on a South Side apartment portfolio he bought four years ago, picking up $8 million more than his purchase price in a recent sale.

An LLC tied to Jason Bordainick, the co-founder and managing partner of New York-based Hudson Valley Property Group, which buys and improves affordable assets, appears to have forayed into the Midwest market with the deal, picking up the four apartment buildings in the Kenwood and Bronzeville neighborhoods for $28 million, according to Cook County property records. The firm has a portfolio of more than 8,000 units in Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island and has spent $2.3 billion in development costs, according to its website.

The buildings in this deal are at 4424 South Drexel Boulevard, 4530 South Drexel Boulevard, 4700 South Drexel Boulevard and 4725 South Ingleside Avenue, records show. They total 144 units, with the deal coming out to about $194,400 per unit, and they were all built within the first three decades of the 20th century, according to Apartments.com listings. The largest and newest is the 66-unit, 1926-built three-story property at 4424 South Drexel. The smallest and oldest is the 12-unit, four-story building first completed in 1908 at 4725 South Ingleside.

Bordainick signed a $29.5 million mortgage against the properties with U.S. Bank Trust, public records show, meaning the buyer may be planning to put money into upgrading the properties as the loan exceeded the purchase price recorded in public records.

Brian Chien-Chih Chen bought the properties for $19.7 million in 2018. Chen made both transactions through a company called I’m Abe Froman LLC, an apparent reference to the Chicago-set film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.”

Hudson Valley didn’t return a request for comment and Chen couldn’t be reached.

Though the deal comes as rising interest rates pose continued threats to Chicago’s multifamily market, the asset class maintained momentum last quarter. Sales activity matched pre-pandemic records set in 2015 and 2019, according to a quarterly report from Marcus & Millichap.

Other recent affordable multifamily players to make trades in the Chicago area include Jonathan Rose Cos., which has bolstered its portfolio with local assets. It has bought a 272-unit apartment complex on the Near West Side for $17.5 million, a 13-building multifamily portfolio for $10.7 million, a 318-unit complex near the future Obama Presidential Center for $25 million in a joint venture with Preservation of Affordable Housing, and a 146-unit complex in Chinatown for $11.6 million.

Jeffrey Jaeger’s affordable housing landlord Standard Communities also paid about $43 million for a South Side apartment complex earlier this fall. On the West Side, a Section 8 housing complex sold for $14.5 million over the summer.