Orange County's Advanced Real Estate has bought Casitas Apartment Homes, a 253-unit community at 1900 South Campus Avenue in Ontario, for $56,175,000.
That is about $222,000 a door for a 1963 garden property on 14.72 acres. citybiz reported that The Mogharebi Group arranged the sale for a private Los Angeles owner, and that the buyer assumed the property's in-place loan at 3.11%.
A Competitive Sale, And A Cheap Loan
The offering drew multiple offers in a competitive marketing process. Jordan Pakzad of The Mogharebi Group tied that bidding to demand for well-located Inland Empire apartments and to the property's fundamentals.
The financing is the quieter part of the price. The brokerage described the 3.11% rate as below market, and Advanced took the loan with the apartments rather than replacing it. In a quarter when Matthews put the average Inland Empire multifamily cap rate at 5.54%, a loan that cheap is not a footnote. It is part of what a buyer is actually purchasing.
The balance and the lender were not part of the public account. What is clear is the structure: equity from a fund, plus debt already sitting on a 63-year-old community.
Thirteen Properties Into One
Advanced Real Estate President Paul Julian said the purchase was a consolidation, not a one-off check. "We were able to trade into this property with the equity from 13 smaller assets that were brought into the Fund (via 721 contributions) in 2023," he said.
He also said those contributing partners now hold interests in an institutional-size asset, and that he expects it to produce much higher returns than the smaller properties they put in. Thirteen assets becoming one 253-unit community is a different bet than buying a single garden court and waiting on rent growth.
Otto Ozen, who represented the seller with Pakzad, put investor interest in a regional frame: Inland Empire apartments still look more affordable than product in Los Angeles and Orange counties, people keep moving into the market, and the supply-and-demand balance favors owners of buildings that already exist. Elevated construction costs and tight capital markets, he said, have slowed new development and improved the outlook for communities like Casitas.
A 1963 Campus Four Miles From The Airport
Casitas is single-story, with one-bedrooms averaging about 550 square feet and two-bedrooms about 775. The brokerage argued that the wide site and low-rise layout help operations. That is a seller's case for a property that predates most of the freeway landscape around it.
The location is easier to measure. Casitas sits about four miles from Ontario International Airport, with access to Interstate 10 and State Route 60. For a workforce renter, that is a short drive to the airport, the warehouses and the inland freeways. For a buyer, it is a reason a 1963 floor plan can still clear a competitive process in 2026.
Fewer New Units, More Trading
The broader market has been absorbing apartments faster than it is building them. Matthews reported that the Inland Empire absorbed 337 multifamily units in the third quarter of 2026, against 141 in the same quarter of 2025. Vacancy was 4.2%, 26 basis points tighter than a year earlier.
Completions were 327 units in the quarter and 1,614 over the trailing 12 months, down 71% from the prior trailing period. Sales volume moved the other way: $1.5 billion over those 12 months, up 46%. Average pricing sat at $247,000 a unit, higher for a second straight year, even as cap rates rose for 18 consecutive quarters.
CoStar has described apartment trading across the Inland Empire as rebuilding from recent lows. Casitas fits that tape: an older asset, a named institutional buyer, and a loan assumption that keeps yesterday's rate attached to today's deed.
How $222,000 A Door Compares
Recent inland sales do not line up in a single band. In Pomona, Terramonte at Foothill, a 138-unit complex also built in 1963, sold for $265,942 a unit, according to REBusinessOnline. That property sits on 9 acres and was renovated between 2012 and 2023. Casitas, on a larger site and without a reported renovation campaign, cleared roughly $44,000 less per unit.
Upland Village Green, a 186-unit complex at 1420 Chaffee Street built in 1982, sold to Watkins Commercial Properties for $48.5 million, about $260,750 a unit, in its first trade in more than four decades. Closer to Casitas on price, Springbrook Park Apartments in Riverside carried an allocated $27.3 million, or $227,500 a unit. Mayfield Park in San Bernardino went for $13.8 million, about $164,286 a unit. Those two garden properties were part of a 203-unit pair that sold for $41.1 million to a Fullerton private investor, Connect CRE reported.
Casitas lands under the third-quarter regional average and under the renovated 1963 Pomona sale, and well above the San Bernardino print. With new completions down sharply and a 3.11% loan still in place, the Ontario price is less a verdict on 550-square-foot one-bedrooms than a read on what buyers will pay for existing inland apartments when the next building is harder to finance.
