Auction set for Oceanfront apartment tower

By Josh Brown
The Virginian-Pilot
© August 19, 2009

VIRGINIA BEACH

A major insurer has scheduled a foreclosure auction on a nearly 60-year-old apartment tower at the Oceanfront.

The 16-story Mayflower Seaside Apartments, one of the region's first apartment towers, is scheduled to be auctioned on Aug. 31, according to a legal advertisement by Cigna Corp., the Hartford, Conn.-based insurer, which holds the loan on the property.

The 265-unit building is owned by an affiliate of Fairfield Residential LLC, a San Diego-based developer, builder and manager of multifamily properties. The company purchased the building from Colonial Properties Trust two years ago for $33 million.

The auction was announced in a legal announcement published Tuesday in The Virginian-Pilot.

The Mayflower is the first major apartment complex in the region to go into foreclosure since 2006, said Dan W. Johnson, a senior vice president at real estate firm CB Richard Ellis and a specialist in the local apartment market. The last complex to be sold in a foreclosure auction was Monarch Crossing, a 260-unit complex in Newport News, he said.

Vikki Sherman, a marketing director for Fairfield, declined to comment on the Mayflower auction.

The apartment complex was 99 percent occupied, according to a recent report by to Real Data, a Charlotte, N.C.-based apartment research firm. The average rent for a unit in the complex is about $1,000 a month, according to the research firm.

Josh Brown, (757) 446-2318, josh.brown@pilotonline.com

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The city should be ashamed

Submitted by Chris33 on Thu, 08/20/2009 at 1:45 pm.

I lived in the Mayflower when a tropical storm came through and all the apartments on the ocean side leaked. Water was literally pouring into my apartment, and the kitchen was an inch deep in water. The management refused to replace the carpets, and the city of Va. Beach would do nothing. Everyone who lived in those leaking apartments left, and they just rented them to new suckers. That place should be torn down!