Someone just cut a very large check for downtown Troy living. Zen City Center, the apartment tower developed by Unicorp, changed hands today in a deal valued at roughly $72 million. The relatively new, market-rate building, which opened in 2021, sold for about $252,000 per unit, a premium number for a suburban multifamily property. Brokers and the buyer have kept quiet on who now owns the building.
According to Crain's Detroit Business, the sale closed at about $72 million, and that roughly $252,000-per-door price ranks among the most expensive multifamily trades of buildings with 100-plus units since March 2020, based on CoStar data cited in the report. Crain's notes that CBRE brokers in Southfield marketed the property but declined to identify the buyer, and that attempts to reach Unicorp's Chuck Whittall were not successful before publication. Crain's coverage provides the reported sale price and broader market context.
Project documents and marketing materials line up on the building's basic stats. The tower includes 286 units and was wrapped in construction in 2021, according to the developer and contractor. O'Brien Construction lists Zen City Center as a 286-unit project completed in 2021 for Unicorp, while property marketing listings detail the downtown Troy address and parcel information. Together, those sources confirm the unit count and the building's role as the residential piece of the broader City Center site.
Rents reported for the property, drawn from CoStar data and cited by Crain's, are on the higher side for a suburban setting: about $1,440 for studios, roughly $2,021 for one-bedrooms, around $2,597 for two-bedrooms and approximately $2,957 for three-bedrooms. Those asking rates help explain why an investor would pay up for a walkable, amenity-heavy building near Troy's main retail corridor. The price-per-unit math, paired with that rent profile, figured prominently in how brokers pitched the deal.
Part Of A Larger City Center
Zen City Center is tucked into the larger Troy City Center complex, a mixed-use site that also features a roughly 300,000-square-foot office building and ground-floor retail. Marketing materials for the project highlight a new parking deck with about 1,468 spaces and tens of thousands of square feet of retail, underscoring the location's transit and retail orientation in downtown Troy. The CBRE marketing brochure lays out additional specifics on the site's layout and available retail space.
Why Buyers Are Paying Up
The deal adds to the evidence that well-located, walkable suburban downtown properties are drawing serious investor interest around metro Detroit as multifamily fundamentals and limited new supply support higher pricing. Industry write-ups on the region's apartment market point to renewed attention on suburban mixed-use projects as downtown retail and office patterns continue to shift, and Troy's proximity to the Somerset Collection bolsters the rent and leasing story for this particular building. Local public filings and county deed records are expected to eventually spell out the buyer's identity and the official transfer amount.
