Anatomy of a Deal.

Boyd Willat, creator of the DayRunner planner, SENSA pen and a developer of courtyard apartments in West Hollywood, sold a Harper Avenue apartment complex for $4.2 million.

The buyer was Accord Interests LLC, which earlier this year sold the former AIDS Project Los Angeles building at 1313 Vine St. to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

Willat built the 14-unit Isola Bella complex at 1320 N. Harper Ave. in 1993 with the intention of selling the units as condominiums. When Willat finished renovating the building, the real estate market wasn't strong enough to support sales at his target level, and he reverted to rentals. He had planned to take the units to market as condos this summer and sell the 1,250-square-foot (average) units for between $350,000 and $400,000. Instead, he sold the whole thing for $302,000 per unit.

The sale came about because Andrew Levant, a senior broker with George Smith Partners, has relationships with both sides of the transaction. He said he was helping Accord principals Joe Mansour and Karl Sternbaum search for investment opportunities and approached Willat with the idea of selling the complex as a package rather than piecemeal.

Sternbaum said the developer would spend more than $500,000 on exterior fix ups and continue to rent them.

"There was the option to turn them into for-sale units, but we felt that marketplace is in short supply of rental property," he said.

The units -- all with two bedrooms, two-and-a half bathrooms, loft space, private rooftop decks and, in some cases, enclosed outdoor sleeping quarters -- have been renting for between $3,800 and $5,000 per month. Sternbaum said the work, mostly exterior, will be complete by the end of October.

Accord is a commercial and residential developer best known in Los Angeles for the Nickelodeon animation offices in Burbank and the Pasadena Courtyard hotel in Old Pasadena. The developer has built 25,000 apartments in Texas, Florida and Missouri. This is the first residential project for Accord in Los Angeles.