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

Venture on Maryland is an apartment community at 749 E Maryland Avenue, near the Central Avenue light rail corridor in Midtown Phoenix. It was built in 1967, and it hadn't been meaningfully updated in years when we acquired it in August 2025. A year later, two-thirds of the units have been renovated, rents on the finished units are up 36%, and occupancy is climbing. It's a good look at how our value-add strategy works in practice: buy a well-located older building, renovate it one unit at a time, and bring below-market rents up to where they should be.

A Well-Located Piece of Midtown

The property spent decades as Maryland Greens, a 78-unit community made up mostly of one-bedroom apartments a block off the Central Avenue corridor. The location is the reason we bought it. It sits in the heart of Midtown Phoenix, close to the Central Avenue light rail and just minutes from downtown jobs, ASU's Downtown campus, and Phoenix College. Infill land like this is essentially spoken for, so new apartments rarely get built here, and well-kept 1960s buildings trade at a real discount to anything newly constructed. That gap is exactly the kind of basis we look for. We acquired the property in August 2025 for $10.7 million.

The Value-Add Plan

The plan was a full interior and exterior repositioning. Inside the units, that means new cabinets, countertops, stainless appliances, lighting, and finishes, and the difference shows in the before-and-after photos below. Outside, we've been refreshing the paint, signage, and landscaping to reintroduce the property to the market under its new name. We're also growing the unit count, taking the property from 78 units at acquisition to 80 planned, which pulls more income out of the same footprint.

The Renovations Are Driving Rents

So far the numbers are moving the way we underwrote them. Renovated units are renting for about 36% more than their pre-renovation rates. Across all units, the average rent has climbed from $1,061 before renovation to $1,322 today, and once a unit is fully renovated, scheduled rent reaches roughly $1,549. On an annual basis, the plan takes in-place rent from around $1.0 million toward a full-market run rate of about $1.47 million. That works out to roughly $176,000 in additional annual income once the work is done.

Occupancy Is Following the Work

Renovations are about two-thirds of the way there, with 52 of 79 units finished. What's encouraging is that occupancy is keeping pace. It's up 5.1% since March, and the renovated units are leasing noticeably faster than the older units still waiting their turn. That's the pattern we want to see. The improvements aren't just lifting rents, they're bringing in demand.

What's Next

The remaining 27 units are scheduled to be renovated by the end of the year. As they come online and lease up, we expect both rents and occupancy to keep moving toward full market rate. Most of the heavy lifting is already behind us: the acquisition, the exterior work, and two-thirds of the interiors. What's left is finishing the job and letting a stabilized property do what it was repositioned to do.

Venture on Maryland is a small property, but it's a good picture of how we work. We didn't buy it on a guess about where interest rates go next. We bought a well-located building in a growing city at a sensible price, and we're improving it steadily, one unit at a time, turning a 1967 apartment community into a modern one and a below-market rent roll into a market-rate one. With new supply in Phoenix finally pulling back and demand still showing up, this is exactly the kind of property, and the kind of work, we want more of.