An Oakland waterfront complex went for less than half its value

Portico, a 378-unit building at Brooklyn Basin, went to an Essex affiliate at about $186,000 per apartment. What renters keep, how it compares, and what it says about the waterfront.

Houseberry Research TeamPublished Oct 15, 20266 min read

AI-rendered view of the Portico Waterfront apartment building at Brooklyn Basin on the Oakland Estuary at blue hour Photo: Houseberry

Portico opened on the Oakland Estuary in early 2024: eight stories, 378 apartments, more than 80 percent of them with a water view, at 37 8th Avenue in Brooklyn Basin. On October 7 it went to the company that bought its loan, at a value of $70.4 million.

That is about $186,000 per apartment, and 58.1 percent below the $168.2 million the county assessor put on the building in January 2026, according to the Mercury News, which found the transfer in Alameda County records. The new owner is an affiliate of Essex Property Trust, one of the largest apartment landlords on the West Coast. For the people who live there, not much changes this month. For Brooklyn Basin, it is the second big market-rate building in about 18 months to end up with a lender, and for Oakland it is the lowest price per apartment of any recent distress deal we tracked.

How a waterfront building lost half its value

Los Angeles developer Cityview built Portico as an Opportunity Zone project with a $107.5 million construction loan from Bank OZK, Multi-Housing News reported when it finished in March 2024. Units run from 611 to 1,316 square feet, from studios to three-bedroom townhomes, with 331 parking spaces on nearly two acres.

It opened into a crowded market. CoStar counted about 10,000 new apartments delivered in Oakland over a few years, and the city added 2,751 units in 2024 alone, per RealPage figures reported by Multifamily Dive. A building financed at 2020 costs and leased up against that much new supply had little room for error.

Essex bought the loan from Bank OZK and used it to take the property, the Mercury News reported. The article doesn't say what Essex paid for the loan or what was still owed on it.

Portico is not alone. Here is how its price per apartment compares with other Oakland buildings that sold or went back to lenders since late 2024.

Bar chart comparing price per unit for Portico Waterfront and five other distressed Oakland apartment deals, 2024 to 2026 — At about $186,000 per apartment, Portico changed hands for less than half of what 447 17th Street sold for in December 2024.

The next-lowest, Mason at Hive at 2350 Valley Street, went back to Fannie Mae in August at a $27.8 million valuation for 105 units. Portico is newer, bigger and on the water, and still came in about $79,000 per apartment lower.

Brooklyn Basin is a 64-acre former industrial waterfront between Jack London Square and the Fifth Avenue Marina, approved for up to 3,700 homes. Signature Development is the master developer. Its own market-rate building there, the 241-unit Orion, went back to a UBS Realty Investors affiliate by deed in lieu of foreclosure in April 2025, with debt and interest at about $138 million, The Real Deal reported.

Between them, Orion and Portico hold 619 market-rate apartments, and both buildings now belong to a lender or the buyer of a loan. The affordable side went the other way: the fourth and last affordable building, MidPen's 124-unit Foon Lok East, opened in August 2025, bringing Brooklyn Basin to 465 completed affordable homes, according to the state housing department.

What renters at Portico keep

Your lease. Under California's Code of Civil Procedure section 1161b, a lease signed before a foreclosure sale survives it, and month-to-month tenants get at least 90 days' written notice before a new owner can end their tenancy, with Essex stepping in as the landlord.

What renters don't get is rent control. Portico is too new for Oakland's rent ordinance and for the state's rent cap, which exempts buildings for their first 15 years. Oakland's just cause eviction rules exempt new construction for 10 years from its certificate of occupancy, according to the city's coverage guide, so if Portico's certificate dates to 2024, that protection arrives around 2034.

Listed base rents on October 15 ran from about $2,507 for a studio to $3,937 for a two-bedroom, per the building's Redfin listing. Citywide, Oakland's median rent was $2,366 in October, up 16.3 percent from a year earlier, according to Apartment List. A new owner with a much lower cost basis has room to hold rents steady. It also has a rising market to price into.

What it says about the neighborhood

According to Houseberry data, the Embarcadero neighborhood that holds Brooklyn Basin scores 1.9 out of 5 overall, 108th of the 130 Oakland neighborhoods on our Oakland ranking. Its amenities score is 2.9, and our neighborhood review puts it plainly: food and errands are sparse. A water view does not buy a grocery store.

The district's for-sale homes are mostly condos, and few sell, so its price line jumps around. Here is how it sits next to its neighbors, from Houseberry's September 2026 price histories.

Neighborhood	Overall score	Typical home, Sep 2026	A year earlier
Embarcadero (Brooklyn Basin)	1.9	$365,000	$327,000
Produce and Waterfront (Jack London)	2.1	$529,000	$563,000
Chinatown	2.5	$323,000	$367,000
Clinton	2.5	$718,000	$699,000

The derived number worth sitting with: Portico's price per apartment, about $186,000, is roughly half the typical Embarcadero home sale. Rents are rising fast in Oakland while Jack London and Chinatown home prices fell over the year. Buildings are being repriced near the bottom, and the condos around them are not climbing with the rents.

Our view

We read Portico as a financing failure. The building is full of the things renters pay for: new units, water views, a shuttle to BART and the ferry. Its problem is that it was paid for with 2020 money and leased up into a glut. At $186,000 a door, the math very likely works for Essex at today's rents in a way it never did for Cityview. That is how a market clears.

The counter-case is real. If two waterfront buildings in a row cannot carry their loans, the next phase of Brooklyn Basin gets harder to finance, and the 3,700-home plan stays a plan. Parcel H, 83 townhouse-style homes, is under construction now. Its second phase of 137 has no date.

Under Oakland's rules today, a transfer by foreclosure pays no city transfer tax. Measure FF on the November 3 ballot would end that for buyers who own 20 or more properties, which covers Essex. We walked through the measure and its rates in our Measure FF explainer. At $70.4 million, the city's share would have been about $1.76 million.

For a waterfront district that has now handed back two of its market-rate buildings, the more useful view is the long one. You can compare Embarcadero, Clinton and the rest of the estuary on Houseberry's Oakland map, and watch whether the next Brooklyn Basin building breaks ground before the next one changes hands.

Sources

About the Houseberry Research Team

The Houseberry Research Team is Houseberry's reporting team: Bay Area real estate analysts, data specialists and longtime local market watchers. Every day we check the public record: building permits, city council and planning agendas, county recorder filings, state housing bills, police incident data and school results. Then we tie each story to what it means for specific neighborhoods, using Houseberry's own neighborhood data on prices, appreciation, safety, schools and amenities. Questions or corrections: Contact us.

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