Earlier this month, Jersey City, New Jersey-based REIT Veris Residential made progress toward its goal of selling $300 million to $500 million of assets by unloading The James in downtown Park Ridge, New Jersey, for $117 million.
In July, Veris sold Signature Place in Morris Plains for $85 million. CoStar identified Boston-based apartment owner Berkshire as the buyer of both properties. CBRE Institutional Properties marketed both properties.
The James, built in 2021, sits adjacent to Park Ridge Station, which serves NJ Transit’s commuter railroad, in an affluent suburb of Bergen County. “The reason the buyer was interested was because of the lack of future development in the town,” Jeffrey Dunne, vice chairman at CBRE, told Multifamily Dive.
The James, which consists of 240 units and nearly 18,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space, features luxury class A finishes. Its amenities include a fitness center with Precor equipment; a yoga and spin studio; coworking spaces; multiple clubrooms including a game room with billiards and shuffleboard; a plunge pool; and an outdoor lounge with TVs, fire pits and barbecue grills.
“We had valued every asset for them, and this situation came about,” Dunne said. “We helped them come up with pricing and on it because it wasn't marketed at all. But it made a lot of sense for them to sell.”
Sales process
In 2024, Veris completed $230 million of non-strategic asset sales. It also refinanced $526 million of mortgages, leaving no remaining consolidated debt maturities until 2026. All of its debt is either fixed or hedged.
Over the past four years, Veris’ leadership has transformed the company into a pure-play multifamily REIT with core, class A properties in the Northeast. However, the company said public markets aren’t rewarding its efforts and portfolio.
CBRE is currently marketing the following properties for Veris:
- The Henry, a 169-unit community in Pomona, New York.
- Crown Point, a 466-unit community in Danbury, Connecticut.
- The Waverton, a 116-unit community in Secaucus, New Jersey.
- Lexington Fairview, a 43-unit multifamily community in Fair Lawn, New Jersey.
- William House, a 63-unit multifamily community in Newark.
- A 234-acre waterfront development site in East Lyme, Connecticut.
- A 34-acre development site in Montvale, New Jersey.
- A 1.3-acre development site in Jersey City.
Veris CEO Mahbod Nia said that the value of the REIT is not accurately reflected in its share price.
“We are keenly focused on closing this valuation gap through measures including, but not limited to, the crystallization of assets where we believe we can achieve strong pricing at or near to their intrinsic value, despite broader challenges in the investment market amidst the backdrop of heightened economic and geopolitical uncertainty,” Nia said on the REIT’s fourth-quarter 2024 earnings release in late February.
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