OAKLAND — An apartment complex in a bustling section of downtown Oakland has been foreclosed, marking the second time in just a few days that a lender has seized a housing hub in the city’s urban core.
Mason at Hive, a 105-apartment residential hub in Oakland’s lively and hip Uptown neighborhood, has been taken back by its lender due to a delinquent real estate loan, according to documents filed Aug. 7 with the Alameda County Recorder’s Office.
In an unsettling occurrence, the foreclosure of the loan for the Mason at Hive residential hub came on the heels of a lender’s move on Aug. 4 to reclaim The Nook on Valdez, a “micro apartments” complex a few blocks over.
Signature Development is the real estate firm that built the Mason at Hive apartments, which opened in 2015 next to The Hive, a mini neighborhood of restaurants, shops, drinking establishments and gathering spaces.
The Mason at Hive apartment hub is located at 2350 Valley St. in Oakland, the county real estate records show.
In 2016, an affiliate of Signature Development obtained a $39.7 million loan for the Mason at Hive apartment complex.
Fannie Mae, officially the Federal National Mortgage Association, bought the loan for the apartment complex in 2016 and was the note holder that foreclosed the financing vehicle. Fannie Mae typically buys loans from local lenders and bundles them into financial packages that are sold to investors.
The unpaid debt on the apartment complex at the time of the foreclosure was $34.8 million, Alameda County records show. Fannie Mae, though, placed a value of just $27.8 million on the property when it took back the residential hub.
The failure of the Mason at Hive loan served as a reminder of the increasing woes in the Oakland apartment market.
Apartment values appear to have faltered in Oakland, an economic erosion that has unleashed loan delinquencies and even foreclosures in a growing number of instances.
Signature Development led the project to transform a vacant auto row into The Hive mixed-use mini-neighborhood at 2335 Broadway. Signature, through an affiliate, developed the apartments that went into foreclosure on a site next to The Hive.
The overall Hive development is seen as a creative transformation of former auto dealerships that had decamped from downtown Oakland, leaving behind empty spaces.
The Hive totals about 100,000 square feet. The financing for The Hive’s commercial spaces is independent of the Mason apartments’ failed loan.