The South Florida investors who bought a suburban Tampa condominium community out of financial distress in 2009 are putting the units on the market for a bulk sale.
Vertica Partners LLC, based in Tampa, is marketing 218 of the 390 units in Arbors at Carrollwood for sale. Arbors at Carrollwood is a fractured condominium because the majority of the building’s units are owned by Gamla-Cedron Group and operated as apartments. The remaining units are individually owned.
Gamla-Cedron entered the community in 2009, buying 149 of the units for $39,000 each — a significant discount to $139,000 per unit that the previous owner, ABBA Real Estate Development Group, paid in 2005 when it bought the community as apartments.
It has since acquired an additional 69 units in the building and owns about 1,000 units throughout the region, in Promenade at Tampa Palms, Falls at New Tampa, Preserve at Temple Terrace and Lakeside at Seven Oaks, a townhouse development in Wesley Chapel.
The marketing campaign launched late last week and is already receiving “significant interest,” said Sean Lance, principal with Vertica Partners.
“We were pretty inundated just after our launch last week,” Lance said.
Large commercial properties aren’t typically brought to market with asking prices. Vertica will call for offers on July 10.
The next owner will likely continue to operate the units as apartments, Lance said. Unlike The Slade — a fractured condo tower in the Channel district that’s on the market— Arbors at Carrollwood is not a likely candidate to convert to condos.
“The garden-style condo market — if that comes back, we’re still seeing that several years away,” Lance said. “We don’t see any signs in the market that the reconversion of these properties is going to take place in the next couple years.”
Arbors at Carrollwood is the first Tampa property that Gamla-Cedron is selling off, Lance said.
“They feel it’s the most stabilized and provides them the best return on their capital,” he said.