Palatine Capital Partners has sold the 345-unit Beech Lake Apartment complex in Durham, NC to a joint-venture between Westdale Properties and Lubert-Adler for $19.7 million.

Palatine acquired Beech Lake for $15,600,000 in September 2009 through a joint-venture with Somerset Partners.

“We substantially improved Beech Lake’s physical condition, and were able to grow rents by more than 11% during our hold period,” said Alex Hurst, founder and Managing Partner of Palatine Capital Partners in a statement. “We are actively looking to expand our apartment portfolio, with a particular focus on ground-up development in the Southeast and mid-rise properties across the country.”

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The Rams Plaza shopping center property in Chapel Hill has been sold to a trio of investors from Charlotte, New York and Florida that plan to make at least $1.5 million in renovations and improvements to the aging property.

The Kalikow Group of Westbury, N.Y., through a newly formed joint venture partnership with Argus Properties of Miami, paid $13.25 million for Rams Plaza to the property’s former owner, Madison Marquette of Washington, D.C.

Madison Marquette had paid $13.1 million for the property in 2007 in a deal that also included the purchase of the University Mall property in Chapel Hill. Rams Plaza was built in 1982 at 1728 Fordham Blvd., and is anchored by a Food Lion grocery store, the Bailey’s Pub restaurant and a CVS pharmacy store. The property has 113,557 square feet of space and was 94 percent occupied in the third quarter, according to Triangle Business Journal’s quarterly Space survey.

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Arco Commons, a shadow-anchored strip center located at the corner of Highway 70 and Brier Creek Parkway in the Brier Creek Commons Shopping Center in Raleigh, has sold for $4.2 million to an undisclosed buyer. Brier Creek Commons Shopping Center includes tenants such as Dicks Sporting Goods, Target, BJ’s Wholesale, Barnes and Noble, and Ross Dress for Less. Arco Commons is fully leased to AT&T, Jimmy John’s and Mattress Firm on long-term corporate leases. Joe Graham of CBRE-Raleigh’s investment properties group represented the buyer.

Investor interest in Raleigh-Durham continues to heat up, as the area cements its reign as one of the hottest secondary markets in the nation.

The cap rate compression in primary markets has fully trickled down to less densely populated areas like the “Research Triangle,” the tech-heavy region anchored by North Carolina State University, Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and the cities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill.

Since the beginning of the year, at least five multifamily sales in Raleigh-Durham registered cap rates of 6 percent or less. “It’s amazing that we’re seeing cap rates in the low-5 percent range again,” says Dan Fasulo, managing director of New York-based market research firm Real Capital Analytics.

But investors active in the market aren’t quite as amazed by the swift rebound in values. A combination of rapidly improving fundamentals and very low-cost debt is helping to make those low cap rates pencil out in Raleigh-Durham.

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