Philadelphia's largest apartment complex tests the workforce repricing

Philadelphia's largest apartment complex is on the market four years after KKR paid a record $357 million for Presidential City, and the listing will test whether that benchmark reaches the workforce product where most of the city's renters live. AJH Management, the Lakewood-based owner, has put International City Apartments up for sale, a 1,068-unit complex of 64 two-story buildings spread across the Mews and Villas at 7900 Lindbergh Boulevard and the Chalets at 8400 Lindbergh Boulevard, where average monthly rents run $1.60 per square foot, the Philadelphia Business Journal reported through The Real Deal.

AJH bought the complex from its original developer, Korman Ventures, for $141 million in 2019, has since put $5 million into upgrades, and is now marketing it through a Newmark team of Carl Fiebig, Erin Miller and Maura Kate Spellman without disclosing an asking price. The 1,068 units break down as 92 studios, 513 one-bedrooms and 463 two-bedrooms, with 648 apartments across the Mews and Villas and 420 in the Chalets.

The listing arrives four years after Post Brothers sold Presidential City, Philadelphia's second-largest complex, to KKR for $357 million, a benchmark that Post Brothers has followed by putting The Darien and The Poplar on the market—514 units and about 33,000 square feet of commercial space, each with a 10-year tax abatement. International City also lands as Philadelphia's ground-up pipeline finally leases up, a reminder that the property recovery runs on supply.

At $141 million, AJH's basis worked out to roughly $132,000 a unit, or near $137,000 a door once the $5 million in upgrades is included, which means a 2019 price now has to clear in a market that has repriced sharply upward. As this publication has argued, apartment capital is repricing per door; International City is the listing that will show how far that repricing reaches beyond trophy assets and into workforce housing.