1031 Exchange from CA to FL with 30-Units in Coral Springs FL

[Tiffany Mittal]

Investment Info:

Large multi-family (5+ units) buy & hold investment in Coral Springs.

Purchase price: $8,450,000
Cash invested: $2,600,000

Built in 1986 and situated on a 1.51-acre site, the boutique apartment community offers a unit mix of 30 two-bedroom/two-bath apartments. Property amenities include a secured lobby with telephone entry, central elevator, trash chutes, two stairwells, expansive landscaped grounds with fruit trees, 73 surface parking spaces, and a quiet residential setting.

What made you interested in investing in this type of deal?

We recently moved from San Diego, CA to Stuart FL and needed to exchange our CA assets using a 1031 exchange process. We exchanged from an 18 unit property into this property as we are moving our entire portfolio out of CA.

How did you find this deal and how did you negotiate it?

We found in in 2022 but we weren't ready to buy since we had not sold our downleg property yet. But it came back on the market due to a partnership issue in 2024, just in time as we had just sold out CA property and were looking for our exchange property.

How did you finance this deal?

Long term financing with Mid-Florida Credit Union, with 6% interest, a 1-year IO period, and no prepayment penalty. We feel that rates will come down in the next year, so we will hopefully take advantage of it when it does. If it doesn't we are still comfortable with our long term financing deal.

How did you add value to the deal?

We have a secret sauce of increasing our NOI through RUBS and other NOI hacking tools like managed wifi, storage and parking fees. By increasing our NOI, we will increase the property value without having to invest any capital or raise rents. We will refinance the property and repeat the process again on the next deal.

We have a proptech company as well called Utility Ranger which we used to automated our RUBS billing through our platform and drive profits.

What was the outcome?

We closed on March 6th, 2025!

Lessons learned? Challenges?

We didn't do enough of a sensitivity analysis and assumed we would get a 70% LTV on the loan. Unfortunately the lender came baack with 60% LTV and we had to come out of pocket the difference of almost $800K (ouch!). We will now alway estimate a 60% LTV and if we can get a higher LTV, it's a bonus!

Did you work with any real estate professionals (agents, lenders, etc.) that you'd recommend to others?

CBRE, Calum Weaver was great. Mid-Florida Credit Unit was great to work with as well. Also Conor Cook for our insurance was great.