Dive Brief: 

• Elme Communities completed the sale of its last remaining properties — The Kenmore and 3801 Connecticut Avenue — on Sept. 28 for $103.2 million after prorations and closing costs, according to a press release. Its last day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange is expected to be Nov. 5. Its share transfer books will close at 4 p.m. that day.
• After the sale of the Riverside apartments in Alexandria, Virginia, on Sept. 14, the Bethesda, Maryland-based REIT used a portion of the proceeds to repay in full all remaining debts and other obligations under its $520 million term loan entered into on Nov. 12, 2025, which was later terminated. 
• Elme began its selloff in 2025. After initiating a “formal evaluation of strategic alternatives” in February 2025, it sold 19 properties to an affiliate of Atlanta-based investor, developer and manager Cortland Partners for $1.6 billion in cash last November.

Dive Insight:

Elme, known as WashREIT until 2022, expanded outside the Washington, D.C., metro area in the 2020s by acquiring properties in Atlanta.

Despite Elme’s moves to improve its portfolio, its stock continued to trade at a discount to private-market values, forcing the REIT to look for alternatives, according to CEO Paul McDermott. 

In January 2025, Michael Lewis, an analyst for Truist, identified Elme as one of the most likely merger-and-acquisition candidates in the apartment industry. “We agree with management’s statement that it has transformed the company over the past several years and yet the stock continues to trade at a material discount to private market values,” he wrote in a research note shared with Multifamily Dive.

Even after deciding to liquidate, the process to liquidate wasn’t seamless. On June 17, The Beitel Group terminated the $280 million purchase-and-sale agreement to acquire the 1,222-unit Riverside Apartments in Alexandria, Virginia, and related undeveloped land.

The REIT regrouped quickly, however. On July 23, it announced that an Elme subsidiary entered into a contract with FPA Multifamily LLC to sell the massive apartment complex and undeveloped land for $250 million — $30 million less than the amount in the terminated agreement, according to a separate filing with the SEC on the same day.

Additionally, the REIT agreed to sell the 193-unit Elme Bethesda to CAPREIT for $59 million, according to a May 27 SEC filing. Elme completed the sale of the 210-unit Elme Watkins Mill in Gaithersburg, Maryland, to RailField Partners on June 10, according to the June 23 filing. 

Jon Siegel, co-founder and chief investment officer at RailField, told Multifamily Dive in emailed comments that “buying from a liquidating REIT was a little different than typical just because they have some different motivations than everyone else.”

He noted it ended up being easy to work with Elme. 

“We were concerned that they would have checked out in managing the property and that there would be nobody on the other end of the phone when we did the deal, but it turned out that Elme’s management was strong and the team that we worked with was very responsive and professional,” Siegel said.

On Sept. 28., Elme also announced that its board of trustees approved an additional special liquidating distribution of $1.74 per common share of beneficial interest, par value $0.01 per share, per the release. The dividend will be paid on Oct. 22 to shareholders of record at close of business on Oct. 9. With that, the aggregate cash liquidating distributions will reach $16.41 per common share.

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