Roberto Pesant, senior vice president of investment sales with Walker & Dunlop, in Miami.

A Walker & Dunlop Investment Sales LLC team closed the $139 million sale of the Signature at Kendall apartment community.

Signature at Kendall sits on 26 acres near the southeast corner of Krome Avenue and Kendall Drive  at 8881 Southwest 172nd Ave.

CC Kendall Residential LLC and CC Kendall II LLC sold the apartments to Breit MF Kendall Phase I LLC and Breit MF Kendall Phase II LLC, affiliates of the Blackstone Group LP, according to the Miami-Dade County property appraiser's office and state records.

CC Kendall II is registered to CC Residential and Ares Management LP, and CC Kendall Residential is registered to Ares Management, according to state records.

CC Residential is the Coral Gables-based company formed by South Florida developers and investors Armando Codina and James Carr, which developed Signature at Kendall.

Ares Management is a Los Angeles-based publicly traded alternative asset manager, according to its website.

Walker & Dunlop Investment Sales managing directors Roberto Pesant in Miami and Chris Conklin in Plantation led the team representing funds managed by Ares Management. The deal closed Dec. 15.

The property was developed in two phases and sold in two phases.

The first phase was finished in 2016 and has 396 apartments on 18 acres east side of Southwest 172nd Avenue. The limited liability companies affiliated with Blackstone bought this for $96.9 million.

The second segment west of 172nd Avenue was finished in 2017 and has 150 apartments on 8 acres. The buyer paid $42 million for this part of Signature at Kendall.

Overall, the deal breaks down to $254,395 per apartment.

The sale price is much higher than CC Residential's land purchase price. The company bought the 18-acre lot for $13 million in November 2014 and the 8-acre parcel for $5.7 million in July 2016, according to the county property records.

Despite the high demand from renters in the area, this deal had some challenges.

“The biggest hurdle to overcome was helping the institutional investors understand the submarket's actual high-barriers to entry in light of all of the adjacent and agricultural lands surrounding the property,” Pesant said. ”To the naked eye, you would see all the vacant lands surrounding the property and all the agricultural land and think that it was easy to build future supply and build competitive supply. In fact, most of that land is outside the urban development boundary and not developable. It means that there's no future competition” for tenants.

The team received about 10 offers for the property, Pesant said.

Signature at Kendall offers one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments ranging in size from 843 to 1,397 square feet, according to its website.

The luxury apartments allow residents to have pets and offer amenities including washers, dryers and dishwashers in the apartments, walk-in closets, stainless-steel appliances and private balconies. Also, there's a swimming pool, clubhouse, gym and dog park.

The first part of the project is fully stabilized, and the second is in the first few months of leasing, Pesant said.

Walker & Dunlop Investment Sales is part of Walker & Dunlop Inc., a Bethesda, Maryland-based commercial real estate service and finance company.