HB Management Pays $34M for Seattle Apartment Complex

HB Management has picked up a 100-unit apartment building in Downtown Seattle for $34 million, nearly a quarter below its assessed value.

The locally based investor bought the AVA Belltown, a six-story complex at 2800 Western Avenue, in Belltown, the Puget Sound Business Journal reported. The seller was AvalonBay Communities, based in Virginia.

The deal works out to $340,000 per unit. The price is 24 percent below the property’s assessed value of nearly $45 million despite its location in trendy Belltown.

The sale follows a trend of falling multifamily values as the market struggles with higher high interest rates.

AvalonBay developed the Western Avenue building in 2001 after buying the half-block in 2000 for $5.6 million, according to public records cited by the Business Journal. Rents for its studio and one-bedroom units range from $1,637 to $2,470, according to Apartments.com.

The developer is the fourth largest owner of apartments in the U.S., with 80,325 units and a market capitalization of $24.7 billion, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council.

HB Management, founded in 2004 by the the Hewson and Breiner families, has more than $3 billion worth of multifamily real estate around Seattle, according to its website. Subsidiaries include property management firm Indigo Real Estate Services, brokerage Paragon Real Estate Advisors, CP Capital and Westplan Investors.

In Seattle, HB is co-developing the 46-story Seattle House, the city’s largest multifamily development on the edge of Denny Triangle and South Lake Union. For the 1,130-unit project, HB is working with Vancouver, B.C.,-based Concord Pacific, Canada’s largest master-planned developer.

HB Management, led by partners Ed Hewson and Jon Breiner, has renamed its new acquisition in Belltown the WES. It’s in the same neighborhood as Seattle House, near the offices of Amazon.com and other tech firms.

With its highrise condos and trendy shops, bars and restaurants, the hip neighborhood along the waterfront north of Pike Place Market has become a multifamily development hot spot.

Construction was set to begin this week on a 44-story apartment tower on the site of a former Elephant Car Wash on Denny Way, according to the Business Journal.

— Dana Bartholomew