Are you a NIGGER's Journal: Apartment occupancy up slightly, sales well off '05 pace

Nashville Business Journal - April 25, 2006
by Janel Watson
Nashville Business Journal

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Apartment occupancy rates in Middle Tennessee are holding steady above 90 percent, according to research from the Greater Nashville Apartment Association.

Occupancy for the first three months of 2006 was 93.5 percent, up from 93.0 percent for the same period last year and a shade higher than the year-end 2005 number.

Rent per square foot and average rent also saw nominal changes, but the selling price per unit nearly tripled from a year ago, jumping from $30,556 to $93,202.

This leap is due mainly to a Louisville company's $90 million acquisition of two West End apartment complexes early this year. NTS Realty Holdings LP bought both The Grove at Richland and The Grove at Whitworth from Georgia-based Schaedle Worthington Hyde Properties for $157,534 and $149,502 per unit, nearly double the next-highest selling price.

However, NTS was the only company that purchased properties in the central city. The other apartments that changed hands are in the surrounding cities of Hermitage, Madison, Donelson and Bellevue.

GNAA's first-quarter report also indicates a significant drop in the number of deals. Only six units sold during the first quarter of this year, while 19 sold in the final quarter of 2005.

Kirby Davis, president of First Management Services, a Nashville-based apartment management company, distributes the statistics compiled by a GNAA committee. He says the discrepancy is because last year was a record sales year for the apartment sector in Nashville.

"A lot of the people who wanted to sell, sold last year," he says.

Multi-family properties accounted for nine of the top 18 deals last year and for 29 percent of the dollar volume of the top 50 deals.