As Pathfinder Partners sells another Phoenix apartment property, its chief tells us it's also becoming harder to find similar value-add apartment plays to buy here.

We spoke with San Diego-based Pathfinder's Lorne Polger (on left with Greenberg Traurig's Neil Oberfeld) fresh from selling Shorewood Apartments, a 21-unit complex in Midtown that traded for nearly $2M to Atrium Apartments out of Washington. Lorne says Shorewood fits his company's typical investment M.O.—buy distressed, turn around, and sell after adding 85% to 90% value to the property. (That's how you flip a house and what you do with baseball players if you're the Oakland A's.)

But Pathfinder's next investment in Phoenix may not be buying existing complexes here. “We're finding it harder to find things today,” Lorne says. “I think it's becoming tougher to find deals on the buy side. It's becoming more challenging all throughout the country.” (We've hunted value nearly to extinction.) Pathfinder owns five properties still in Phoenix, including the 96-unit Aura at Midtown, the 144-unit Copper Creek condo in Tempe and the 40-unit McKinley Court Apartments in the Roosevelt district. The next strategy may be to redevelop one of existing holdings here. “Down the road, it may be to tear down and rebuild for-sale product,” he says.