Big real estate players grab two old South Bay apartment complexes

SANTA CLARA — Two six-decade-old apartment complexes in Santa Clara with a combined total of hundreds of apartments have been grabbed by big-time Bay Area real estate players.

Normandy Park Apartments and Vista Point Apartments were bought on the same day for a combined $75.6 million, according to documents filed on May 23 with the Santa Clara County Recorder’s Office.

Sobrato Family Foundation, acting through an affiliate, paid $49.5 million for the 140-room Normandy Park Apartments at 48 and 50 Washington Street in Santa Clara, the county property files show. The Sobrato firm is one of Silicon Valley’s iconic real estate companies.

The deal shows that investors continue to hunger for apartment buildings as investments, even with the economic uncertainties that arose out of the coronavirus outbreak.

Richard Tod Spieker, an executive with Windy Hill Property Ventures, paid $26.1 million for Santa Clara’s 68-unit Vista Pointe Apartments, located at 3455 Homestead Road. Spieker is an active investor in an array of commercial real estate assets, but in recent years, his interests have focused primarily on multifamily apartments.

The seller of the apartment centers, in both instances, was an affiliate headed up by Milton Levin, who is a principal executive with Santa Clara-based Cambridge Property Management.

Both apartment complexes were built in the 1960s.