CSL Partners and Presidium scooped up the 260-unit Pura Vida Hialeah apartment complex for $95 million, with plans for a Live Local Act conversion, The Real Deal has learned.
Montreal-based CSL Partners, a joint venture between Benjamin Farkas and Brandon Chemtov, and Dallas-based Presidium bought the property at 3051 West 16th Avenue in Hialeah from Coral Rock Development Group, according to RelatedISG Realty. Drew Dorsy of Miami-based real estate investor and developer Bindor, as well as Dale Burnett of New York-based private equity firm Big Equity also partnered on the purchase.
Andres Grossmann, of RelatedISG Realty’s commercial division led by Tomas Sulichin, and Alex Isaia of Compass represented the buyers and the seller. The off-market deal closed on Friday.
Coral Gables-based Coral Rock completed the complex in 2022, records show. The firm scored a $12.8 million construction loan in 2019, and a $53.5 million construction loan in 2020 for Pura Vida Hialeah.
The development includes three commercial outparcels with a Wawa and other buildings. They were not included in the sale.
Coral Rock is led by principals Michael Wohl, Stephen Blumenthal, Victor Brown and David Brown.
Pura Vida Hialeah consists of three eight-story buildings with one- to three-bedroom apartments and about 11,000 square feet of ground-floor retail in one building, according to websites for the property and Coral Rock. The complex was 94.2 percent leased at the time of the sale, Grossmann said.
Pura Vida was developed as a market-rate complex. Its website shows monthly rents range from $2,195 to $3,220.
This is expected to change under the buyers’ plan to convert the complex to workforce housing and land a property tax exemption granted under the Live Local Act. Units will be switched to below-market rents as new leases are signed, with the owners already converting some apartments, according to Grossmann.
The Live Local Act, a state law approved in 2023 and tweaked last year, allows developers to build bigger projects than a site’s zoning permits if at least 40 percent of units are for households earning up to 120 percent of the area median income.
Some investors have seized on the law’s property tax exemption by switching completed or under construction market-rate complexes to workforce housing. In Miami Gardens, Asi Cymbal’s Cymbal DLT Companies did this with the 341-unit Laguna Gardens at 20775 Northwest 17th Avenue, allowing the firm to save about $1 million in taxes annually.
The Live Local conversion allows Pura Vida Hialeah’s buyers to meet “growing demand while creating long-term value,” Dorsy said in a statement.
South Florida’s decades-long affordable housing crisis was exacerbated by the influx of out-of-staters from late 2020 through 2022. The unprecedented demand and record rent hikes priced out many longtime residents, many of whom moved elsewhere in Florida, according to experts.
In a statement, Chemtov cited a “significant gap in housing options” for millennials who have “often been forced to look elsewhere for suitable rental opportunities.”
CSL Partners, which Chemtov and Farkas started last year, is a private equity firm that manages and invests in multifamily projects in the Sun Belt and Midwest, according to its LinkedIn.
Pura Vida Hialeah marked CSL’s second investment. In December, the firm paid $58.5 million for the 240-unit Avondale Hills apartment building at 750 Avondale Creek Drive in Decatur, Georgia, according to Traded. Ravi Gupta and Vikram Raya of Vienna, Virginia-based multifamily investment syndicator Viking Capital partnered on the deal.
Presidium, led by co-CEOs Cross Moceri and John Griggs, is a real estate developer, investor and manager with $2.6 billion of assets under management, according to its website and LinkedIn.
South Florida multifamily deals are experiencing a resurgence. Investment sales in the tri-county region hit $4.3 billion last year, up from $3.4 billion in 2023, according to Avison Young data. That’s a far cry from the $9.2 billion volume in 2022 and $15.4 billion in 2021, Avison’s data shows. The deal flurry resulted from the influx of residents and the record rent hikes.
The Federal Reserve’s 11 aggressive interest rate hikes in 2022 and 2023, as well as skyrocketing insurance slowed activity in 2023. The Fed dropped the benchmark rate three times last year, which decreased interest rates on short-term, floating-rate loans. Investment sales last year outpaced the $3.8 billion in 2019, a benchmark year for normal times in South Florida.
Last month, TA Realty paid $118 million for the 300-unit Bell Pembroke Pines apartment complex at 16700 Sheridan Street in Pembroke Pines. That came on the heels of the Pérez family’s Related Group and 13th Floor Investments paying $96.5 million for the 285-unit Arium Lincoln Pointe apartment complex at 17900 Northeast 31st Court in Aventura.