Apartment Land Sells for $11 Million

A San Francisco real estate investment firm said Monday that it has agreed to sell 17.8 acres of land beneath the 440-unit Shakewood Apartments complex in Fountain Valley for $11 million.

BRE Properties Inc. said it bought the land in 1972 for $600,000 and leased it to McNeil Real Estate Management Inc. in Dallas, which owns the apartments on Slater Avenue. Under the terms of the ground lease, McNeil had an option to buy the land this year.

“This purchase is a unique transaction, given today’s extremely slow market in which it’s hard to make numbers work,” said Christopher Malick, vice president of American Funding Corp., the mortgage banking subsidiary of McNeil. “But we decided that now is the time. . . . Owning the land as well as the improvements makes the complex much more valuable.”

The two-story apartment complex is 95% occupied, Malick said.