Getting your player ready...
While prospects hovered over a few remaining positions for accredited investors wanting into Denver’s very favorable apartment market, developer Darell Schmidt and his son Daren broke ground Tuesday on their latest development, Tennyson Place — 81 units being situated along Tennyson Street’s Restaurant Row in the sizzling Berkeley area.
The apartment design by Oz Architects is custom fitted to the demographics of Denver’s red hot residential market, according to Darell Schmidt, President/CEO of Allanté Properties. At a moment when Metro Denver is flagged by Realtor.com as the very hottest of 20 U.S. markets to watch this fall, project specs employ a sizing strategy that caters specifically to millennial generation buyers who are flocking to Colorado’s strong job market, and who are being priced out of the residential market. “This location is exactly what that millennial renter wants,” says Schmidt. “This is a generation that wants to be able to walk to good dining and entertainment, as well as to parks and even grocery shopping.” Tennyson Street has all of that, he adds – steps from Axios Estiatorio, Atomic Cowboy, West End Tap House, Berkeley Untapped, Patrick Carroll’s and other establishments; equally close to Sprouts Market and Starbucks; with other major grocery shopping within a mile. With that accessibility, 80 percent of Tennyson Place’s 81 Class-A apartments are being sized to keep rents lower and return-on-investment higher. Many are studio units, including some that Schmidt calls ‘micro units’ as small as 356 square feet. Residents will enjoy exciting common areas including a club room with fitness center, mid-level terraces, Sky Deck with fire pits, an outdoor kitchen with unobstructed mountain views, and underground parking. That sizing strategy was already proven out with the overwhelming success of a recent Schmidt project completed this past summer: Allanté’s Highlands Place, a mile east along W. 38th Avenue from the Tennyson site. Currently, 100 percent of the available apartments and retail space in that $19 million project has been leased; while a new appraisal on the building puts its current market value at $25.1 million – $6.1 million more than it had cost to build. Schmidt says that appraisal is music to the ears of his investors, many of whom were the first to invest in the new Tennyson Place site. “When construction is completed, those smaller units are really going to rent fast,” Schmidt adds. Remaining positions for accredited investors in Tennyson Place begin at $100,000. “Few investors understand the ups and downs of the stock market,” Schmidt says. “Apartment investments make for a sounder mid-term investment that’s all the more viable here in Denver.” Two weeks ago, metro Denver was listed as the second best return for investors of 50 major real estate markets in the nation, according to BiggerPockets – slightly behind Dallas, ahead of hot markets in Miami, Houston and Atlanta. Last week, Realtor.com named Denver as the very hottest of 20 U.S. housing markets to watch this fall.
