A 476-unit apartment complex built on the site of Mervyn’s old department store headquarters just changed hands in downtown Hayward for $205.3 million, cash on the barrelhead. The buyer, Essex Property Group, picked up Lincoln Landing in an all-cash deal along with its roughly 80,500 square feet of ground-floor retail.
The transaction was documented in filings with the Alameda County Recorder’s Office that same day, according to East Bay Times. The price breaks down to $431,300 per unit, a figure that lands well above typical East Bay multifamily sales this year. The Real Deal reported that Essex acted through an affiliate to complete the purchase, adding a nearly 500-unit residential and retail property to its Bay Area portfolio.
Lincoln Landing’s six-story buildings sit on a site that once housed the headquarters of the Mervyn’s department store chain, which collapsed in 2008. Hayward city officials approved the residential and retail project roughly a decade after that collapse, and the complex’s first phase opened in 2022, per the same account from East Bay Times. City Sports Club, a fitness center, anchors the development’s commercial space.
A Price Tag Well Above the East Bay Norm
The $431,300-per-unit price Essex paid for Lincoln Landing sits 61.2 percent above the average sales price of $267,600 a unit for East Bay apartments so far this year, the station’s report notes, citing Marcus & Millichap data. That gap underscores just how much of a premium buyers are willing to pay for a downtown Hayward property compared with the broader East Bay apartment market…