The Ivy Manor Apartments complex at 167 East Center St. in Manchester has been sold for $5.15 million.

In a transaction indicative of the current state of the Connecticut apartment market, two New Haven-based Realtors have brokered the sale of a 38-year-old brick apartment complex in Manchester for $5.15 million.

Steve Witten and Victor Nolletti of Marcus & Millichap Investment Real Estate Services of New Haven completed the transaction involving the complex on Tuesday. Witten and Nolletti were the sole brokers in the sale of the Ivy Manor Apartments at 167 East Center St., which was purchased for $5.15 million. The seller was Ivy Manor Assoc. and the buyer was Taymil Ivy Manor LLC.

While the apartment market in Connecticut is somewhat slow in general, Witten noted that Manchester has logged only six apartment complex sales in the past 10 years, two of which were this year.

“There’s just nothing being built,” he said. “When we look at Connecticut, Massachusetts and the rest of New England, we see that these are certainly supply-constrained markets. If you look at new housing permits for multifamily residential units, there are only a total of maybe 100 new units in the Manchester market in the last two years.”

Despite the limited supply, however, Witten was quick to point out that from the standpoint of the investor, apartment complexes are still “generating superior yields to what we’re seeing in the stock market and money funds.”

He added, “Buyers are looking for quality, well-positioned complexes, and certainly Manchester is one of the better markets in Connecticut.”

Manchester is home to the Buckland Hills Mall, which employs a significant workforce that is theoretically in need of quality housing.

“There is a need for a place like Ivy Manor,” said Witten, explaining that the new owners plan to upgrade the facility. “They own three other complexes in the vicinity and plan to bring Ivy Manor up from a solid B to at least a B-plus.”

He added, “This is a very strong rental market. We sold a property in Manchester a couple of months ago that was one of the most significant sales in the state. It was sold to an institutional investor, a pension fund from the West Coast. Sales like that continue to demonstrate the strength of the market.”

Located off the Interstate 84/Interstate 384 connector with easy access to Greater Manchester and the city of Hartford, the property is in a supply-constrained market with significant barriers to entry and new construction.

“There are tremendous barriers for new construction,” Witten said. “We obviously need quality housing, but the approval process is a lengthy and onerous process. Towns can often discourage multi-residential housing because there is a myth about apartments being a strain on municipal systems. But that’s not true. Apartment dwellers don’t tax the system such as schools and so on, and they increase the tax base and revenues.”

Ivy Manor Apartments consists of 72 residential units situated within four detached, two-story, walk-up, garden-style brick buildings. Built in 1965 on 2.78 acres, the complex contains 72 spacious units consisting of eight two-bedroom townhouses with one-and-a-half bathrooms, 32 two-bedroom flats with one bath and 32 one-bedroom flats with one bath.

Witten noted that the typical Connecticut apartment property was built in the 1960s and 1970s. There hasn’t been much new construction, and most of the stock consists of 30-year-old brick buildings.

Ivy Manor Apartments offers an all-brick facade, gable roofs with an asphalt-shingled surface and courtyards servicing all four buildings. Each building has a common laundry area, cable television and available tenant storage. Heat and hot water are included in the rent; individual central furnaces service each building with sleeve-mounted air conditioners for each unit and tenant-paid electricity. Each unit features a four-burner range with a hood and fan, a garbage disposal, refrigerator and dishwasher, and two laundry rooms per building. Townhouse units have washer and dryer hookups in the apartment.

Witten and Nolletti also announced that they recently closed a deal for 165 units in East Haven for $16.5 million, 98 units in Hamden for $8.73 million and 303 units in Manchester for $35.6 million.