Photo: A seven story multi-story apartment building at the Hill Estates

The owner of Hill Estates, the largest residential complex in Belmont with 396 rental apartments and townhouses, has placed a “For Sale” sign on the landmark property.

Listed by the Boston office of Dallas-based CBRE Capital Markets, the property built by the DiGiovanni family in the mid-1960s consists of a mix of five—and seven-story mid-rise buildings, two-story direct-entry townhomes, and garden-style buildings. It is located on 14.7 acres off Brighton Street and is bordered by Little River, Little Pond, and the MBTA commuter rail line. Also part of the sale is a 1,600 square foot commercial space fronting Brighton.

A little more than 300 of the housing units are apartments—two-thirds of which are 1,000-square-foot two-bedroom, one-bath flats—located in one of the four multi-story buildings. Nearly all of the townhouses are also two-bedrooms (there is a single three-bathroom), averaging 1,415 square feet. There is limited indoor parking with most vehicles located on local roads within the complex.

The Hill Estates has long been seen as one of the rare market-affordable housing options in the area.

Family-owned since opening its doors nearly 60 years ago, the DiGiovanni clan has not had the financial pressures of partners to max out rents. While the buildings are showing their age, the living units have been periodically updated and are considered by one Belmont Realtors as “a really great value for those not seeking high-end housing.”

The residents are an eclectic and diverse group: students living in apartments, young couples, many first generation American families with small children, and older folks who are priced out of homes and unable to afford upscale retirement communities. On weekend afternoons, the hallways are filled with smells of homelands and ethnic favorites, while you can hear several languages spoken in the common laundry.

While the DiGiovanni family has not commented on the sale, CBRE is touting the property as being primed for a “renovation program” followed by a big rent increase.

The numbers say it all: rents today at the Hill Estates average $2,239 or about $2 per square foot. Compare that to the average $3,800 rents are fetching for Belmont apartments at the most recent new development: rents at Royal Belmont off Route 2 for a 1,101 sq ft two bedroom, two bath flat is $3,900. With apartments in neighboring communities such as Arlington, Lexington, Watertown and North Cambridge achieving rents $1,300 to $1,800 higher than those in the Estate, there is “additional support for a new owner to push rents,” proclaims CBRE.

In addition, Belmont’s housing market will buttress rate hikes on future rents as those wishing to live in Belmont don’t have many affordable options.

“With the combination of increasing home prices and interest rates, the cost to owning has never been higher with single-family home prices averaging $1.7 million, amounting to a 14 percent increase over the last three years and a 54 percent increase in the all-in cost-of-living since 2022,” noted

Due to the size of the complex, likely buyers will likely be one of the big players in the apartment REIT market such as, for example, Equity Residential and AvalonBay Communities.