Elme wraps liquidation with three D.C.-area sales and a $16.41 payout

With its final three D.C.-area sales closed, Elme Communities has put a number on the liquidation: $16.41 a common share in aggregate cash, unchanged from the estimate the Bethesda REIT published in July. Operations terminate Nov. 6.

The two District buildings went for $103.2M in net proceeds — the 374-unit Kenmore in Chevy Chase and the 307-unit property at 3801 Connecticut Ave., between Cleveland Park and Van Ness — with both sales closing Monday and the buyers undisclosed. Across the river, the larger asset, the 1,222-unit Riverside Apartments complex in Alexandria plus adjacent undeveloped land, sold Sept. 14.

Riverside carries the pricing detail: Elme was under an agreement to sell the complex to FPA Multifamily for $250M as of the end of July, a month after a deal to offload it to Beitel Group for $280M fell through. The second contract came in roughly 11% under the first — one transaction rather than a market, but in line with the argument that the apartment bid has become an income underwrite rather than a scarcity call, and that a broken contract is where repricing shows up first.

Elme used that sale to repay in full all remaining indebtedness, liabilities and other obligations under the $520M Goldman Sachs loan it secured at the end of the year. Clearing its secured balance outright as it winds down, it has no need for the structured capital now standing in as lender of record across the apartment maturity wall.

Since announcing the liquidation in August 2025 and completing Cortland's $1.9B cash purchase of 19 apartment buildings in November, Elme has been selling its 10 remaining properties. It lowered payout expectations three times this year, so the final $16.41 holding at July's estimate suggests the last three trades landed where the company had marked them.

Net proceeds put a floor of about $151,500 a unit under the two D.C. buildings, with gross pricing, which would sit above it, undisclosed. This publication's $67M DuPage trade in September priced two suburban Chicago garden assets at $200,000 and $177,100 a door on gross terms — the number Elme left blank is the one that would settle whether these urban assets cleared above or below that.

FPA, meanwhile, ends up with 1,222 units and a parcel of dirt in Alexandria at a contract below the one that collapsed — 19 buildings moved in a single $1.9B agreement, then the remainder sold off one negotiation at a time over more than a year, with the final two buyers in the District unnamed in the disclosure.