Property Spotlight: Inside the Value-Add at Venture on Lockett

Venture on Lockett is an 18-unit community spread across four buildings at 3325, 3351, 3375 and 3395 East Lockett Road in Flagstaff, Arizona. We acquired it in October 2025 from an owner who had held the property for more than 20 years without meaningful updates. Less than a year later, the renovation is finished — all 18 units rebuilt inside — and rents are up 55% over where they started. Fifteen units are leased and three are on the market. It's a good look at our value-add strategy at work in one of Arizona's most supply-constrained markets.

A Supply-Constrained Mountain Market

Flagstaff is a different kind of market from Phoenix, and that's exactly why we like it. The city sits at 7,000 feet, ringed by the Coconino National Forest, which means there's very little developable land and new construction is hard to bring online. Demand, meanwhile, is steady and diverse, anchored by Northern Arizona University, a year-round tourism economy, and a regional healthcare hub. The result is a tight rental market where vacancy has held below 7% and rents have kept climbing. With the median home now running around $773,000, owning costs far more per month than renting, which keeps a large share of the population in the rental pool. For a small, well-located apartment property, those are strong fundamentals to renovate into.

The Value-Add Plan

Venture on Lockett is four buildings with a mix of one-bedroom, two-bedroom, and three-bedroom units, most with attached garages. The prior owner had run it well but left it dated after two decades of ownership, which is the kind of situation we look for. Our plan was a full interior renovation — new kitchens, new flooring, and updated bathrooms in every unit. Because it's a smaller property that was already in decent physical shape, the work moved quickly. As of this month, it's done: all 18 units are complete.

The Renovations Are Driving Rents

The rent story here is stronger than the size of the property suggests. Average rent has climbed from $1,497 before renovation to $2,319 on the units leased today — a 55% increase. At the rents in place when we bought it, the property generated $323,448 a year. With all 18 units renovated and leased at market, that figure runs roughly $511,000 — about $188,000 more annually than the day we took over.

Lease-Up Is the Last Step

With construction complete, the only work left is filling the three available units. Renovated units have leased quickly in a market where quality housing is genuinely hard to find. In-place rent currently runs about $417,000 a year across the 15 leased units, which leaves roughly $94,000 of annual rent still to capture. We expect lease-up to wrap this fall.

What's Next

Once those last three units lease, Venture on Lockett reaches full stabilization — roughly a year after we bought it. At that point the property will have gone from a dated, under-rented building to a fully modernized, fully leased one, with a rent roll to match.

Venture on Lockett is one of our smaller properties, but it's a clear example of how we work and where we look. We didn't chase yield in a crowded market. We bought a well-located building in a supply-constrained city, from a long-time owner who hadn't updated it, and we modernized it unit by unit. Flagstaff won't ever build its way out of its housing shortage the way a flat desert metro can, and that scarcity is precisely what makes a renovated, well-run apartment community there so durable. That's the kind of market, and the kind of property, we want more of.