Downtown St. Pete property sells for $64 million

An affiliate of White Oak Partners has acquired 930 Central Flats in the EDGE District in downtown St. Petersburg.

WOP 930 Central Flats purchased the mixed-use development for $64 million, according to a July 22 deed filed with Pinellas County.

The seller, The Bainbridge Companies, opened 930 Central Flats in February 2019. It’s a six-story, 218-unit mixed-used project with underground parking, ground floor amenities and retail, and five floors of luxury apartments. There are studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments.

Bainbridge bought the property in 2016 for $4.7 million, the Pinellas County property appraiser’s office said. At the time Bainbridge purchased it, it was a vacant tract of land.

The buyer, White Oak Partners, is a multi-family investment company based in Westerville, Ohio. White Oak’s local portfolio also includes two properties in Hillsborough County: Courtney Trace Apartments and The Addison, both in Brandon.

Calls to both White Oak Partners and to Bainbridge for comment were pending return.

The 930 Central Flats sale was one of the highest-priced multifamily sales so far this year, according to a spring 2020 report from Yardi Matrix, a commercial real estate data and research firm. The development sold for $293,578 per unit. In contrast, Nine15 in downtown Tampa sold for $331,492 per unit, and The Slade at Channelside in Tampa sold for $323,194 per unit, both in March. In February, Bainbridge at Westshore Marina sold for $284,900 per unit, Yardi Matrix said.

The Tampa-St. Petersburg market was among the “sturdiest” rental markets in the United States, when the coronavirus pandemic began to strengthen its grip on the country’s economy, Yardi Matrix wrote in a spring 2020 multifamily market analysis. Slowed rent growth was the among the first sign of stress, but landlords began offering concessions, discounts or gift cards to lure potential renters, and the trend might be short-lived, the report said.

Yardi Matrix expected multifamily activity to pick up and the average rent in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area to rise 2.6 percent in 2020.