South Florida Real Estate Investors Shift Focus to the North

A real estate investment firm that entered the North Florida housing market a year ago has sold its first property and is already looking to expand its local presence.

LOB LLC bought the Admiral Apartments in Orange Park in September of last year for $1.3 million. After spending about $125,000 on a new roof and other improvements for the 30-unit complex, LOB sold the property for $1.7 million to Marius Lazureanu, operating as Admiral Apartments LLC.

The Florida home improvement loans taken out by the company allowed it to bump up the property values and, in turn, raise rents about 13 percent, with one-bedroom rents going from $450 to $560 a month and rents for two-bedroom units going from $550 to $670 a month.

LOB also owns two other apartment complexes in the Jacksonville vicinity and is pursuing a similar strategy of improving the properties in order to sell them. With Florida mortgage loan costs as high as they have been, a strong demand still exists for rental units — and LOB LLC is prepared to capitalize on that trend.

“We are value-added players in every deal,” said David A. Fleisher, a partner in the real estate investment group. “We always look for the improvements, usually property improvements and managing expenses and managing rents.”

LOB is based in South Florida, but has shifted its focus to the Northeast corner, given the increasingly expensive costs of Florida real estate in the southern portion of the state. The company is looking at two larger properties and hope eventually to have more than 1,000 units. The shift north, Fleisher said, was based on market dynamics.

“The numbers in South Florida just didn’t work for us,” he said. “We’re not even looking in South Florida at the moment.”