This rendering shows how the Sage Investment Group’s property in Kirkland could look after conversion from a motel to studio apartments.
Images courtesy of Sage Investment Group
Kirkland-based Sage Investment Group, which buys motels and converts them to what it calls attainable workforce housing, has purchased its first property in the city it calls home: a Motel 6 in a prime location just south of The Village at Totem Lake.
Sage bought the 123-room motel for almost $15.1 million, according to King County property records. The motel — located at 12010 120th Place NE in Kirkland, across Northeast 124th Street from Chick-fil-A and immediately east of Interstate 405 — was built in 1988 and sits on 1.86 acres.
Sage, whose headquarters is a half-mile walk from the motel, will continue operating the property as a Motel 6 until it has all building permits from the city of Kirkland to do the conversion to studio apartments.
“It’s a fantastic little property; it’s great as a hotel, to be perfectly honest, so it will stay running as a hotel for probably the next six to 10 months,” Emily Hubbard, Sage co-founder, said in an interview this morning. “Because it’s doing so well, it doesn’t make sense to shut it down until we’re ready to start construction.”
Depending on how long permitting takes, followed by construction for conversion to apartments, the units might not be rentable for 18-24 months.
The Kirkland acquisition follows another Sage motel purchase from the same development group in Mountlake Terrace in June. That property, a Studio 6 extended-stay lodging property, also is well-run and continues to operate as lodging until Sage receives all its permits and is ready to begin the housing conversion.
Sage will convert the Kirkland building, the 30th in its portfolio across six states, to roughly 123 studio apartments that could rent for roughly $1,500 to $1,700 per month. All utilities, cable, internet, and parking will be included, “which is significantly lower than everything around it, so it will be the most affordable option that will come on for market rents in the area,” Hubbard said.
Sage is preparing to open another motel-to-apartment property next month in Bellevue, where it already has a wait list.
Work is nearing completion on Sage Investment Group’s new Bellevue Ridge apartment building in the Eastgate area, where the first residents are expected to begin moving in next month. The property was previously a Quality Inn, which Sage bought in 2024.
“We have people that have pre-signed leases, without confirmed move-in dates, because they just can’t find anything in the area at that price point,” she said.
The Bellevue property, Bellevue Ridge, is a former 106-room Quality Inn in the Eastgate area. Units are renting for $1,875. That includes a base rent of $1,600 per month, plus $275 for all utilities, cable, internet, and parking.
“Bellevue and Kirkland have done a really wonderful job as cities of creating affordable housing for people that are in the bottom 20% AMI (area median income) in the area, but anybody who kind of falls in that above 20% but below 80% doesn’t have a ton of options; in fact, sometimes they have no options,” Hubbard said. “In the Kirkland-Bellevue area specifically, we talk to a lot of tenants that are saying, ‘My only choice is an hour commute each way and it’s killing me, and I will live in a small space if I don’t have to drive’” an hour or significantly more each way, depending on the day.
That’s not good for people or the environment and isn’t sustainable, Hubbard said.
Sage is eyeing other Eastside cities for additional projects, she said.
It also has a number of properties in South Sound that it has converted, or is converting, to apartments.
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