Dealmaker: BWE Secures $43M For New Affordable Housing in Colorado

(15 Sable Apartments, Aurora, Colo.)

Bellwether Enterprise Real Estate Capital LLC, Cleveland, closed a $43.1 million loan to finance new construction of 15 Sable Apartments, an Aurora, Colo., affordable housing community.

Anthea Martin, Senior Vice President in BWE’s Denver office, originated the loan through a private placement for borrowers DBG Properties and Featherstone Development.

“Building new homes like these is key to solving our housing affordability crisis,” Martin said. She noted BWE executed the loan in under 90 days so the borrowers could start creating homes for lower-income Coloradoans.

15 Sable Apartments is a four-story apartment complex that will sit on a walkable, transit-oriented development site, giving residents easy access to local employment, amenity retail and public transit connections to other parts of the metro area. The $56 million project will contain a mix of 78 one-bedroom/one-bathroom, 68 two-bedroom/two-bathroom and eight three-bedroom/two-bathroom apartments as well as indoor and outdoor amenity spaces. The homes will all be affordable to Colorado families earning no more than 70% of Aurora’s area median income with 12 units set aside for households earning no more than 30% AMI.

The project was made possible through the support of the City of Aurora, in particular Councilmember Ruben Medina and Aurora’s Housing and Community Services Department, a property tax abatement partnership with Aurora Housing Authority, a private activity bond allocation from Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, a subordinate loan from Colorado Department of Local Affairs Division of Housing, a tax credit equity investment from Arizona-based Affordable Housing Partners and a sale of property by the Regional Transportation District. Denver-based Shopworks provided architectural services.

BWE provided tax-exempt and taxable loans through the BWE Private Placement platform, which offers developers a single source of competitive, fixed-rate construction-to-permanent debt financing. The 18-year loan with a 40-year amortization schedule includes interest-only payments for the first six years.