A California-based real estate investment firm has added a third property to its Kansas City-area portfolio.
Pacific Sands Funds, based in Irvine, bought two eight-unit apartment buildings at 4319-4333 Mercier St. in Kansas City’s West Plaza neighborhood near the Westport entertainment district. According to Jackson County real estate sales records, the $1.85 million transaction was completed in May.
Now, the firm plans to spend $650,000 to upgrade all of the units, refresh the exteriors and add a new back parking lot and two basement units.
In early 2020, Pacific Sands acquired Villas of Loiret, a 46-unit townhouse community in Lenexa, and Chouteau Heights, a 76-unit apartment complex in the Northland that has been rebranded as Cambridge Commons. It spent about $800,000 to rehab those two properties.
According to Geoff Kudlacz, the company isn’t done with its Kansas City-area
acquisitions. The firm’s Missouri and Kansas operating partner told the Kansas City Business Journal that it has a 50-unit deal pending in Independence.
At the same time as Pacific Sands announced its latest Kansas City purchase, it made a splash in Wichita by buying the 94-unit Commodore Apartments, a 1920s-era hotel building that was converted into apartments sometime around the 1950s. The company plans to spend about $1.6 million rehabbing and repositioning the nine-story building, which is a prominent part of the downtown Wichita skyline.
“Both these properties … represent ideal opportunities for our investors,” Pacific Sands Managing Partner and COO Jim Shute said in an Oct. 17 release. “We were able to secure these properties off market allowing us to make important upgrades to the individual units.”
The firm and its principals have built up a portfolio of more than 500 units in Southern California, Kansas City, Wichita and St. Louis during the past 10 years.