At a glance
- IPA executive managing directors Steve Gebing and Cliff David represented the seller and procured the buyer, according to the announcement from the Marcus & Millichap division that serves institutional clients.
- The pitch runs through employment density: Gebing said North Phoenix is set to generate tens of thousands of high-earning jobs tied to advanced nanometer chip production at companies such as Apple, Sony, Tesla and Qualcomm.
- What the announcement omits is the underwriting: there is no cap rate, no rent roll, no occupancy figure for the 2024-completed asset and no financing terms, which leaves per-unit pricing and a one-mile income radius as the disclosed metrics.
Institutional Property Advisors has closed the $58.7 million sale of Ascend at Black Canyon, a 260-unit apartment community in north Phoenix, to Millburn & Co., with D.R. Horton as seller, and the price works out to $225,769 a door. IPA executive managing directors Steve Gebing and Cliff David represented the seller and procured the buyer, according to the announcement from the Marcus & Millichap division that serves institutional clients.
The pitch runs through employment density: Gebing said North Phoenix is set to generate tens of thousands of high-earning jobs tied to advanced nanometer chip production at companies such as Apple, Sony, Tesla and Qualcomm. The release also puts average household income within a mile of the property at $163,500, with a median of $138,000, and lists HonorHealth Sonoran Crossing Medical Center, PetSmart's corporate headquarters, Honeywell Aerospace, Cox Communications and American Express among nearby employers.
No yield, and no rent roll
What the announcement omits is the underwriting: there is no cap rate, no rent roll, no occupancy figure for the 2024-completed asset and no financing terms, which leaves per-unit pricing and a one-mile income radius as the disclosed metrics. The $83 million Oregon apartment trade this publication covered in September also cleared without a published cap rate, at a blended $189,500 a unit. Set against $225,769 in Phoenix, the two figures are not like-for-like and neither pair of sellers disclosed its going-in economics. Still, the Phoenix trade carries roughly 19 percent more per door, which is where a buyer's view of Deer Valley rents has to show up.
The property sits in Deer Valley, close to the I-17/Black Canyon Freeway, the Sonoran Preserve and the Happy Valley Town Center shopping mall, on more than 10 acres completed in 2024. Amenities include a controlled-access entry, a resort-style pool, a 24-hour fitness center, two dog parks and a pet washing station; the units run one to three bedrooms with stainless-steel appliances and washers and dryers.
The release names D.R. Horton but says nothing about how it came to own the property, at what basis, or why a community completed in 2024 is trading now, so the hold period and the profit are as undisclosed as the cap rate. With a constrained construction pipeline, owners of finished assets have pricing power, and a buyer paying $225,769 a door for a two-year-old property in an employment-dense submarket is taking that side of the trade. Whether the rents underwrite it is a question the next Deer Valley comp will answer, not this release.
Reported by the Deals desk from IREI. Published . Corrections