news-record.com

GREENSBORO - Steven D. Bell & Co. is selling 29 apartment properties, including some N.C. complexes, in the largest collective transaction in the Gate City-based company's history.

Bell, which manages a real estate portfolio worth about $3.3 billion, says it is unloading $677-million worth of apartments in two separate portfolio sales.

The first sale includes the $105.5-million sale of two properties in Atlanta and Fort Worth, Texas. That sale, of 914 apartments to Chicago-based Orion Residential and GE Capital, closed in late August.

The second sale includes 27 properties comprising 6,294 units throughout North and South Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. Deals for some of these properties are scheduled to close later this month with New York-based DRA Advisors. The sale price for the combined properties is $571.5 million, according to a Bell news release.

Bell had owned many of the properties for about five to eight years. "We were able to generate very good returns on most of the properties sold and felt it was appropriate to go ahead and take some chips off the table," Steven Bell, the company's founder and chief executive officer, said in the release.

Bell principal John Bell said that, despite the landmark sale, the company is still "relatively bullish" on the apartment market.