157 W Ash Ave, Burbank

the successful sale of this 5-unit multifamily property in Burbank, CA.

1. New Career Milestone Achieved

With this closing, we've now sold 300 different apartment buildings in our career. Those 300 multifamily sales combine for $1.02 Billion in sales volume and 4,218 total apartment unit sold.

Our other main specialty is selling land for multifamily development. In our career, we've sold 64 different plots of land which combine for $157 million in total land sales volume and nearly 1,600 buildable apartment units.

To view a list of our career closings, please

2. Deal Story

This is the second time we've sold this building. We originally listed and sold it in early 2022 to the buyer who ended up re-listing and selling it with us just 18 months later. We wonder if this is one of the few sellers who didn't lose money on an investment that they bought in early 2022 and sold in late 2023. We're happy to have assisted the seller in not losing any money during his ownership despite the dramatic change in market values.

During the 18 months that the seller owned the property, he vacated all the units through cash-for-keys agreements and significantly renovated all the units, spending upwards of $200,000 in doing so.

After we listed the property a few months ago, we quickly gained a lot of interest despite the very difficult time in the market. Some of that interest was sparked by the year built (1980s), some was from the assumable loan, some from buyers seeking more landlord-friendly cities like Burbank, and some of it was from buyers trying to close a deal by year end for depreciation reasons (something we see at the end of every year).

However, the winning buyer came from an unexpected source for 2023: a 1031 exchange. This type of buyer, which was an extremely common and highly sought after buyer in previous decades, all but faded away in 2023 due to the historically low amount of sales this year. Naturally, with historically low sales come historically low 1031 exchange buyers in the market to buy. Luckily, our expertise in multifamily sales helped us find and secure one of these coveted 1031 exchange buyers for our listing over the competition.

When we opened escrow, only 1 unit was rented out of the 5 units, and to further complicate matters, 2 of the 4 vacant units were mid-renovation and not rent-ready. Per Chase Bank, we needed to have all units completely finished and rent-ready, and there could only be 1 vacant unit at closing, meaning we...