California-based Stanford University announced yesterday that it has acquired a 759-unit property in Palo Alto, called the Oak Creek Apartments, according to a press release. The terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
The aim of the acquisition is to provide housing for eligible university affiliates near to their workplaces and rent apartments at affordable prices. Those residents who are not renting the university’s “master-leased units” will still be able to access cheaper rates for rents upon their next lease renewal, as per the university website.
The university’s athletics training fields and golf training facilities are located at Stanford’s Founding Grant lands, across the street from the apartments at the Oak Creek campus, and within a half mile of the campus hospitals.
The transactions, done through an affiliate, include a 26-year leasehold and a property loan. Stanford University took over a loan of $125 million from Marena Properties and Woodside-based Pivnicka Properties, based in San Francisco. These companies acquired the properties in 2015, including many three-story apartment buildings, the release states.
“I’m especially proud that we will be able to prioritize housing opportunities for postdocs at Oak Creek because they face unique challenges navigating the local housing market,” said Stanford’s provost Persis Drell, in the statement.
The assignment of the available units will be decided by the university, with postdocs getting the most priority. The university has leased many apartments at Oak Creek for its members in the past several decades, including a 167-unit multifamily with ground-floor retail in Los Altos for $131M, in 2017.
GlobeSt. reports that Stanford owns over 700 acres in Palo Alto, including the Stanford Research Park.
In other recent proptech news, Cushman & Wakefield, a commercial real estate service firm, brokered the sale of a 63-unit multifamily property worth $40 million in Brooklyn. Brigade REAP, a proptech accelerator program, created a fund in 2021 called PropTech@REAP, aiming to invest in proptech companies through seed and pre-Series A stage fundings.