Berkadia completes $78 million sale of San Ramon apartments at $390,000 a unit

Bridges at San Ramon, a 200-unit garden apartment complex in the East Bay suburb, had not been to market in 15 years, per Berkadia, and the $78 million sale at $390,000 a unit closed without a disclosed buyer, seller, or yield. Jason Parr, a senior managing director in the firm’s San Francisco office, ran the assignment on the seller’s behalf with managing director Scott MacDonald, associate Sydney Ladrech and director John Hansen.

The two-story, 1988-built complex sits on 10.39 acres at 309 Springfield Dr., with one- and two-bedroom units averaging about 739 square feet. Parr made the case to investors on adjacency and scarcity: next to Bishop Ranch, which he calls the East Bay’s most dynamic retail and employment hub, and a rare chance to buy a value-add asset in one of the Bay Area’s most desirable submarkets, in a market with what he calls nation-leading apartment momentum. He credits the scarcity of product, not the rent roll, with driving “significant investor interest and a highly competitive bidding process.”

That pitch cuts against PWD’s position on apartment pricing: the multifamily bid has become an income underwrite rather than a scarcity call, with patient capital clearing the 2028-29 supply gap before core buyers return. Parr’s account points the other way, and the transaction cannot settle which reading holds, because the coverage carries no cap rate, no net operating income and no rent schedule; $390,000 a unit is a marker with no yield attached to it. An infill East Bay garden asset of 1988 vintage, with no recent trading history to comp against, can still draw a competitive process on the sell side. It is a print, and a fresh one, since by the broker’s account the last trade here long predates the rate move that reset apartment values.

Berkadia’s September has otherwise run through the capital side of the business: it arranged a $125 million floating-rate construction loan for the second phase of PTM Partners’ EDGE Collective tower in St. Petersburg, and closed $12.4 million of low-income housing tax credit equity on a 52-unit project in South Haven, Michigan, which put it into Wallick Development’s pipeline for the first time. A $78 million sale-side assignment in San Ramon is different work from either, and a reminder that brokerage revenue on the West Coast still comes disproportionately from owners who have held through a full cycle.

Who bought it, and at what rents, remains blank; until an East Bay trade surfaces with a yield attached, $390,000 a unit stands as the figure the next San Ramon seller will quote and the figure a skeptical buyer will argue with.