Underhill Associates is leading a fund to target apartment bargains - Business First of Louisville:

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Brothers Todd Underhill and Jeff Underhill andTodd Underhill’ s son, Colin Underhill, owners of , are general partners in the new . The Underhills are joined by Louis “Andy” whose family owned , a regional engine distributorship, and his son Mattheew Willinger. Pluris’ managing partners are Colin Underhill and Andy Andy Willinger, an accountant, manages several real estate investment including , which was formed to handle the family’s The limited partnership plans to use $10 millio n it is raising from investors to leverage purchaseas of multi-unit residential properties.
Those purchases are expected to begij with two apartment complexese for a total ofaboug $30 million. They would be acquirefd in a partnershipwith , a Louisville-based real estated developer. The concept is simple, said Colinn Underhill, who manages Westport Village shopping center forhis family’xs firm. The partners plan to buy apartmentf complexes with high cash flows from ownerws who need toraise cash. With the long-runnin real estate downturn, there are opportunities to buy multi-family units from firms that invested at the top of the Underhill said. “There are value play s no one has ever and there is no one totake advantage.
” Underhill said his familu began preparing last year to go after theswe opportunities, reorganizing the property-management side of Underhill Associatexs in anticipation of adding staftf to manage more units. Since the 1960s, membersa of the Underhill family have bough t and renovated distressed apartment buildings and otherreal estate, and they have abourt 1 million square feet undedr management.
In addition to residential and commercialproperty development, Underhill Associated manages about 800 units in 12 apartment complexes in or near But because they invested heavily in the $40 milliobn transformation of Camelot Shoppingy Center into Westport they have been held back from makintg further acquisitions by a lack of liquiditgy — “like 99 percent of the otherd (developers) out there,” Colin Underhilp said. In 2004, the Underhills bought the 14-acre Cameloyt site, which then had a 40-percen t vacancy rate, for $7.4 That was about $1.1 millionj less than the $8.5 milliohn the previous owner paid a 13percent discount.
Westport Village now is about 80percen leased, Underhill said. “We want to buildd on the momentum of a projecgt that no one else thought was possible,” he said. After creating the venture fund earlierrthis year, the partners have secured contracts on two Fla., properties in a partnership with NTS, with Plurie owning 49 percent of the real estate, and NTS owning 51 Pluris would manage the properties. The properties are Sabap Park Apartments, a 162-unit development on 13 and GolfBrook Apartments, a 195-unig development on 20 acres.
The developments are about a half-mile apar t and are what Underhill describesas “A-class” propertie in desirable areas with accesw to interstates. The average apartment size at both developments isabour 1,500 square feet. NTS built both properties in then sold them together in 2006 to 302 Sabal Park Place Longwood LLC and 385 Golf Brookl Circle Longwood LLCfor $71.5 according to documents filed by NTS. The contracts would allos Pluris and NTS to buy back the apartmentr complexesfor $32.5 million, a 55 percent discount, the Pluri s partners said.