Nashville-Based Lion Real Estate Buys Atlanta Apartments For $51M

A Nashville apartment investor has picked up its fifth property in Metro Atlanta.

Lion Real Estate Group paid $51M for Briarhill Apartments, a 292-unit complex at 1470 Sheridan Road, from Florida-based Beacon Real Estate Group, according to the Georgia Superior Court Clerks' Cooperative Authority database. 

Beacon paid $54.2M for the property in 2022, according to the real estate database Reonomy. 

The property, which was built in 1988 and spans 10 acres, was 94% occupied at the time of the sale. It is near the new Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s Arthur M. Blank Hospital on North Druid Hills Road. It is also next to Executive Park, the suburban office park owned by Emory University, which is planning a $1B redevelopment of the property.

Its proximity to those properties made Briarhill a compelling value-add purchase, Lion co-CEO Jeff Weller said. That’s because the people who work there — nurses, doctors and other medical staff — are likely insulated from potential job losses due to artificial intelligence, Weller said. More than 10 million jobs are expected to be replaced by AI and automation by 2030, according to December’s Forrester AI Job Impact Forecast. 

“We’re really excited being near medical education. That can’t really be disrupted by AI. You got high-wage people working with their hands,” Weller said.  

Wth a pool of high net worth and family office money, Lion targets Sun Belt multifamily properties erected in the 1980s and 1990s, invests in their refurbishing and then bumps up rents, while still being competitive with surrounding Class-A apartments, Weller said. 

For Briarhill, Lion plans to invest around $11K per unit to redo the interiors and exteriors of the property. It will then eventually raise rents by $200 per month, he said. According to Weller, apartment rents range from $1.55 to $1.80 per SF.

The property already is a focal point for nearby medical staff. Children’s Heathcare considers Briarhill a preferred community for its employees and is centered in a submarket with more than 40,000 healthcare workers, according to Lion. A third of the complex’s renters work in the healthcare field, Weller said. 

Atlanta’s apartment market is slowly recovering from a deluge of new product, as occupancy rates increase and rents stabilize. Institutional investors have been trading properties in Atlanta at the highest level since 2022, according to a second-quarter Marcus & Millichap report. 

But while institutional investors are focused on buying the newest properties, Weller said older properties in prime locations offer the most compelling investment return for Lion’s investors. 

“When the market goes into a trough, you just go Main and Main. And this is a Main-and-Main location,” he said.