Atlanta firm picks up 2 east-side apartment complexes

An Atlanta real estate firm has expanded to Las Vegas with the purchase of two east-side apartment complexes as the valley’s rental market heats up.

The firm, Carroll, recently announced that it acquired the 436-unit Emerald Springs and a 383-unit complex roughly 3 miles away, The Meadows.

Both are on Nellis Boulevard, with the renamed Arium Emerald Springs near Bonanza Road, and the rebranded Arium Meadows near Desert Inn Road.

Carroll did not disclose the purchase price, but Clark County records show the properties traded for $163.25 million combined.

Southern Nevada’s rental market has accelerated amid a broader housing boom fueled by cheap borrowing costs for buyers and the quest for more space as people work from home during the pandemic, prompting many people to move here from more expensive cities.

At the same time, landlords have ramped up their purchases in the valley following a sharp pullback after the pandemic hit.

Investors picked up 10,424 apartments in the Las Vegas area this year through July, compared with 3,065 during the same stretch last year and 13,079 during the same period in 2019, according to brokerage Cushman &Wakefield.

Carroll’s chief operating officer, David Perez, told the Review-Journal that both complexes were 96 percent occupied at the time of sale and that the company had been looking to buy a rental property here for three or four years.

He noted that Carroll has expanded elsewhere into the western U.S. and that visitor totals have surged in Las Vegas this year, after the coronavirus outbreak sparked a plunge in tourism, the backbone of the economy, in 2020.

Perez also cited Southern Nevada’s growing population, adding it’s a “huge benefit for us.”

Overall, rents have been climbing at an escalating speed across the valley, outpacing markets throughout the country, as affordability issues loom here and around the U.S.

The typical rental rate of a Las Vegas-area home soared 22.7 percent year over year in July to $1,662, compared with a 9.2 percent jump nationally to $1,843, listing site Zillow reported.

Las Vegas’ rent growth was second fastest among the 50 metro areas in the report.

It’s a common strategy in Southern Nevada for landlords to acquire older apartment buildings, spruce them up, and raise the rents. Perez indicated his firm plans to address deferred maintenance but wouldn’t accelerate prices, adding it wants the units to be affordable and that the firm doesn’t want to “overimprove” the properties.

Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342. Follow @eli_segall on Twitter.