California apartments trade for $31m as investors follow renters to California’s Central Valley

FPA Multifamily has sold ReNew, a 128-unit development in the Central Valley community of Visalia, Calif., for $30.65 million.

The buyer of the property is a private-investment group from nearby Santa Barbara.

Visalia is one of 70 cities that make up California’s Central Valley, which stretches approximately 450 miles from Sacramento to Bakersfield.  The region has an inventory of 1,055 multifamily properties of 50 units or more totaling approximately 123,000 units, according to Yardi Matrix.

“The Central Valley has long been thought of as strictly an agricultural area, but that is only one part of its economic story,” said Otto Ozen, The Mogharebi Group executive vice president, which represented the seller. “Government and healthcare are large and growing economic drivers, which combined with the region’s lower cost of living, has resulted in an in-migration of people from higher-cost coastal cities. Yet new construction has not kept up with demand.