Courtesy / Malone Commercial Brokers
The development includes multi units and ranch houses intended for the workforce housing market.
June 20, 2021
Opportunities seen for Topsham workforce rental development
Courtesy / Malone Commercial Brokers
A rental development in Topsham once served as military housing for the former Naval Air Station Brunswick. It received quite a bit of investor interest.
The acquisition of a 60-year-old rental development for the workforce housing market is expected to provide the new owner with some improvement opportunities to strengthen the portfolio as a long-term hold.
Congress Circle Development LLC bought the development, called Patriot Common and located off Canam Drive in Topsham, from Patriot Brunswick Holding LLC for $6.9 million.
Joe Malone and Jennifer Small of Malone Commercial Brokers brokered the transaction.
The 73-unit residential complex consists of multi-unit buildings and single-family homes on 14 acres.
The multi-units consist of 16 two-level buildings, each with four rentals, for a total of 64 units. Of those 64 units, 56 have three bedrooms and one bath; eight have four bedrooms and 1.5 baths. There are shared carports that have one covered parking space for each unit.
The complex also has nine single-family ranches, each with four bedrooms and two baths.
It’s close to Mt. Ararat Middle and High Schools and a couple of miles from I-295 and from Topsham Mall, a retail hub for the region.
The list price was $7.43 million. The portfolio was marketed as an investment opportunity.
The seller, Patriot Brunswick Holding LLC, is a group of Maine and Texas real estate investors.
Peeled off
Patriot Common was originally part of a larger portfolio of military housing in Topsham and Brunswick that were associated with the former Naval Air Station Brunswick.
In 2011, the base was decommissioned and transferred to the Midcoast Regional Redevelopment Authority to turn into the Brunswick Landing business campus.
Around the same time, Auburn developer George Schott bought roughly 700 former military housing units that were formerly associated with the base, in Brunswick and Topsham.
That purchase included Patriot Common.
In 2017, Schott sold 334 units at Brunswick Landing and the 73-unit Patriot Common to an investor group that included the Presidium Group, a Dallas-based real estate company that owns thousands of rental units in Texas and Oklahoma, and Maine investment partners Chris Rhoades and Andrew Preston.
Small said she and Malone were initially tasked with selling about 200 of those units, clustered into two complexes in Brunswick and the Patriot Common complex in Topsham, as a single package.
But eventually, they decided to peel off Patriot Common and market it separately. That decision opened the door to more buyers looking for a reasonable investment from both the price and property management points of view, she said.
The decision was also prompted by queries they received about Patriot Common as a stand-alone purchase.
Value-add
The seller had performed upgrades to a number of units over the years, including new paint, flooring and appliances, said Small.
“There are some value-add opportunities for the new owner to do some updates to the units and eventually strengthen the portfolio as a hold. But it was a solid product,” she said.
Patriot Common saw quite a bit of interest from both local and out-of-state investors, she added.
Advantages of the location include proximity to schools and local amenities that are just a couple of minutes drive away.
The buyer is a local investor who has owned and operated quite a few units in Greater Portland.
“He’s looking to rebuild his residential portfolio,” she said.
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