Places This Week: Largo apartments, Snell Isle home, Belleair Development, office vacancies

Two Largo apartment complexes fetch eight-figure sales prices. A Snell Isle home has a new owner. Belleair Development beefs up its 4^th Street portfolio. Office vacancies remain elevated, but St. Pete is doing better than other parts of the area.

Here’s this week’s roundup of local real estate news.

Eight-figure deals

Apartment sales remain hot. Two large apartment communities in Largo sold in the past couple of weeks, as did two smaller apartment buildings in St. Petersburg, Pinellas county property records show.

• The Pointe at Clearwater is the new name for the 252-unit apartment complex at 2554 Oak Trail North in Largo. The complex, built in 1972, sold for $39 million, according to a deed filed April 22. The seller was ECI Group, a real estate firm in Atlanta, and the buyer was Beacon Real Estate Group in Coral Gables, Florida. It previously was called The Columns at Allens Creek.

Beacon Real Estate bought the Largo apartments. (Photo credit: Facebook)

• 13500 Rodgers Ave. in Largo, known most recently as Forest Creek Apartments, sold for $11.75 million on April 21. The seller was Rodgers Forest Creek in St. John’s, Florida and the buyer was Latitude Real Estate investors in Beverly Hills, California. The complex has 104 apartment units and was built in 1985.

• Queen Anne Apartments, with 40 units in two buildings at 4725 and 4729 39^th Ave. N. in St. Petersburg, sold for $4.27 million on April 19. The seller was a New York company, 585 North Avenue Corp., and the buyer was Palatino Properties in Naples, Florida.

• A small apartment building at 801 Grove St. N. in St. Pete sold for $1.1 million on April 8. Magna Properties sold the two-story, eight-unit building to 801 Grove St. N. LLC.

Luxury in high demand

Snell Isle continues to draw deep-pocket buyers. The latest deal was the sale of 117 Bay Point Dr. NE. David and Elizabeth Samuelson sold the five-bedroom, four-and-half bathroom, 5,105-square-foot home for $6 million to Simran and Amy Singh, according to a deed filed April 16.

“The home has one of the most prime locations in Pinellas and it is waterfront with amazing city views and spectacular sunsets,” said Bethsabé Bockman-Pedersen, the Smith & Associates Real Estates realtor who represented the sellers. “The home was built by Windstar [a Tampa-based design/build firm] who has a reputation for building solid, high-quality homes with incredible attention to detail and exquisite craftsmanship. Every detail of this home is pure perfection and truly all-encompassing in luxury refinements.”

Bockman-Pedersen, a top producer with The Richards Group at Smith & Associates, said there’s incredible demand for luxury homes in St. Petersburg.

“We have low inventory, especially when it comes to waterfront homes in the coastal areas of our neighborhoods. That’s why this home was a true gem. Waterfront is in high demand for the luxury buyer in Tampa Bay,” she said.

117 Bay Point (Photo credit: realtor.com)

117 Bay Point (Photo credit: realtor.com)

Belleair adds another property

Alcove Assisted Living at 2801 and 2831 4^th St. N. sold for $3.25 million on April 15. The property was acquired by 2500 34^th St LLC, an entity associated with Belleair Development Group, profiled recently by the St. Pete Catalyst and one of the most active developers in Pinellas County. The buildings on the site were constructed in 1948 and 1953, according to the Pinellas County property appraiser. The assisted living facility closed on March 31, 2021, according to Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration.

Office vacancies

Overall vacancy rates for office space in the Tampa Bay area ended the first quarter of 2021 at 14.6 percent, a new report from Cushman & Wakefield said. That’s up 2 percent compared to the same period a year ago.

Top-of-the-line Class A office space vacancy is up 4 percent year-over-year, but Class B vacancies are down by 0.8 percent. Several large blocks of vacant sublease space came on the market in the first quarter of 2021, primarily because of the increase in Class A vacancies throughout the Bay area, the report said.

In St. Petersburg’s central business district, the office vacancy rate was 9 percent at the end of Q1 2021, while the rest of the city had a 14.3 percent office vacancy rate.

The lowest office vacancy rates areawide are in Hyde Park in Tampa (4.9 percent) and downtown Clearwater (6.3 percent).

The highest office vacancy rates are in northeast and southeast Hillsborough County (19.3 percent and 17.5 percent, respectively) and in Bayside, the area outside of downtown Clearwater, where 18.1 percent of the office space is empty.

Industrial vacancies are much lower than office space. Throughout the area, only 7.1 percent of the industrial property is vacant. In north Pinellas, the vacancy rate is a slim 1.2 percent. It’s 6.4 percent in the Gateway/Mid Pinellas area and 13.5 percent in south Pinellas.

One of the biggest industrial leases in Q1 2021 was in the Gateway area. ID Logistics leased 48,757-square-feet at 2005 Gandy Blvd.

2005 Gandy Blvd. (Photo credit: Loopnet)

NOTE: This article has been updated to reflect the correct name for The Pointe at Clearwater.