2016 Top Deals | Southwest Florida

Like the Sarasota and Manatee submarket, Southwest Florida's largest commercial sales of the past year involved apartment projects.

Three of the top five largest sales were for multifamily communities, which grew in popularity during 2016 as a result of increased household formations, greater discretionary income for housing, consumer preference and increased job creations.

The plethora of bigger apartment deals in Charlotte, Lee and Collier counties stands in contrast to the activity in the three-county submarket in 2015, when not a single multifamily deal cracked the top five. Then, the top deals in the market were of a wide variety, from retail to a high-end beachfront hotel and senior housing to raw land. This year, retail and land still have a presence, but apartments were the preferred investment vehicle, accounting for more than half of the top sales and nearly 70% of the total dollar volume of the top five transactions.