Pensam Capital has acquired Briarwood Apartments, a student housing/multi-housing community consisting of 422 units in College Station, Texas. The company has purchased more than 1,100 apartments outside Florida in the past 90 days.
Read more at Globe Street
The Canyon-Johnson Urban Funds (CJUF) have purchased The Dylan, a 125-unit apartment community located in the Oak Lawn submarket of Dallas. The Class-A project, completed in 2009, is helping to fill a growing demand for new, high-quality apartments for residents living in the dynamic Dallas-Fort Worth metro area.
CJUF, the joint venture between Canyon Capital Realty Advisors and an affiliate of Magic Johnson Enterprises, plans to enhance operations at The Dylan to meet market demand over the next three to five years. The property, originally built as for-sale condos, will continue to be operated exclusively as an apartment community.
“CJUF has been active in Texas for many years, and we are excited to make our first investment in the Dallas residential market,” said CJUF Managing Partner Bobby Turner. “The Dallas-Fort Worth area has strong fundamentals and many of the characteristics we look for, including density, diversity and demand,” he said.
Earvin “Magic” Johnson added, “We are dedicated to bringing quality housing to dense urban areas like Dallas with a strong employment base and growing economy. The Dylan is a very good project for the people of Dallas, and fits right into Canyon-Johnson’s program of investing in urban America.”
Read more at Business Wire
By Henry Cisneros, CityView
In the wake of the recent economic downturn, there are significant trends moving beneath the foundation of the real estate industry that are creating a “new normal” for the decade ahead. For the first time in history, more people in the world live in urban areas than in rural communities. In the United States, this means that America’s metropolitan areas are the true centers for population and economic growth. At the same time, the sources and flows of global capital have experienced major shifts, reconfiguring funding sources to achieve goals.
We are seeing these trends impact the multifamily development marketplace, which is experiencing a promising resurgence. Of all real estate sectors, multifamily rental seems to be leading the pack in recovery. The CoStar Group predicts a sharp spike in new units for 2012, with more than 22,000 units forecast for 2011. CoStar anticipates that number to jump to more than 94,000 units in 2012 and just over 109,000 units in 2013.
Multifamily is also attracting investment attention thanks to new demographics and increased demand. U.S. Census projections for 2010-2015 indicate 4 million renters are projected to enter the market as home-ownership rates decline; at the same time, an additional 4 million echo boomers will benefit from expected job growth, enabling them to seek independent residences. They are expected to seek out primarily rental properties.
As Jeff Courtwright, executive vice president for the southwest U.S. for Lincoln Property Co., observes, “clearly there is a demographic shift with echo boomers coming of age. Aged 20 to 34, echo boomers are renters 60 percent of the time. As baby boomers are retiring and downsizing, they are another large demographic to target. Both should increase multifamily demand for the near term.”
Read more at MultiHousingNews
Arizona-based MC Cos. has acquired the 680-unit Lincoln Green Apartments in northwest San Antonio from a receiver, jump-starting a repositioning plan and upgrades to seize on the upside of 120 off-line apartments and below-market rents.
Read more at CityBizRealEstate
The 200 Unit Lochwood facility at 11117 Lochwood Boulevard in Dallas, TX has sold to Live Oak Lochwood, LLC of McKinney, TX.
The Seller was J.P. Morgan Chase & Co./En Quernus Holding Corp., a Delaware corporation of Phoenix, AZ.
From: CityBizRealEstate
What a report card! Another quarter, another round of impressive rent fundamental numbers in the apartment sector, with rent growth continuing, particularly increasing its pace in secondary markets as occupancies return to pre-recession highs. The inclusion of May and June—the beginning of peak rental season—in Q2 numbers makes mid-year data all the more significant, and reports from Carrollton, Texas-based MPF Research and Dallas-based Axiometrics show cause for optimism with continued buoyancy in effective rent growth and apartment occupancy across the country.
“There are some really good numbers in the second quarter, and by and large, the numbers came in as expected although with a little bit of shuffling in performance by product niche and also by metro,” says MPF Research vice president Greg Willett. MPF pegs total Q2 revenue lift for the apartment sector at 2.5 percent, driven by an average effective rent increase of 1.7 percent and an 0.8 percent occupancy increase that puts the national average at 94.3 percent, a substantial jump from the low of 91.8 percent recorded in late 2009, but still well below the 95.6 percent occupancy achieved just prior to the recession in 2008. “There’sa little bit of room there in occupancies for some additional absorption,” Willett says. “But a big chunk of the revenue growth is going to come on the rent side, except for a handful of markets—particularly in the Pacific Northwest—which are not all the way back to completely full.”
Read more at MultiFamily Executive
Getting financing is still a challenge for apartment developers today — Douglas came through again for Epstein’s latest project — but apartments are now the favored class of commercial real estate among buyers and builders. If you see a building under construction, it’s most likely an apartment complex.
The tepid economy and cratered housing market have been good for apartment landlords, analysts say, and the slow pace of recovery is expected to help keep apartments the most desirable abode for many in the years ahead.
“The next decade is likely to be the most profitable for our industry in the last 20 years,” said Charles Brindell Jr., president of Mill Creek Residential Trust, a real estate developer that plans to build 350 units in Irvine.
Homeownership goes in and out of favor, UCLA professor Stuart Gabriel said, and now it’s in decline.
“The pendulum swings back and forth a bit,” Gabriel said. “Homeownership is not dead, it’s just in a period of adjustment.”
Read more at the Los Angeles Times
Three giant cranes — one red, two yellow — have taken up residence along a one-mile stretch of Seattle’s Madison Street over the past six months.
Beneath each one a new apartment complex is taking shape. Together, they’ll contain more than 470 units.
Apartment development is a cyclical business, and right now it’s on a big upswing in the Seattle area. More new apartments will come on the market in King and Snohomish counties in 2013 than in any year since 1991, one researcher projects.
This apartment boom, however, is different from those that preceded it.
This time it’s focused almost entirely on Seattle. Developers, for the most part, are bypassing the suburbs.
The city accounts for 85 percent of all the apartments under construction — and 90 percent of all units in the pipeline — in King and Snohomish counties, says Tom Cain, president of research firm Apartment Insights Washington.
Read more at The Seattle Times
The home rental market is growing at a powerful rate. The 2011 State of the Nation’s Housing report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University attributes the booming rental market to a combination of factors, including a troubled homeowner market, unemployment and demographic shifts. Compared to the nearly flat homeowner household growth rate, the renter household rate grew by approximately 1.5 million in the past two years alone, bringing the current number of renter households to 39 million.
Shortage of Affordable Rental Housing Stock
Despite the demand for rental properties, only 124,000 new multifamily rental units were completed in 2010, the smallest increase in 17 years. In addition, many lowest-cost rentals are being permanently lost from the stock due to upward filtering to higher rent ranges, conversions to seasonal or nonresidential use, temporary or permanent removals because of abandonment and an aging rental housing stock. This makes it especially difficult for low-income families to find affordable rental housing. The number of poor renters needing affordable options increased from 16.3 million to 18.0 million between 2003 and 2009. Also during this period, the number of housing units that met conditions of being available to households that make less than 50 percent of area median income (AMI), in adequate condition and not already occupied by higher-income renters fell by 400,000 units.
The gap between the number of extremely low-income renters (earning less than 30 percent of AMI) and the number of affordable rental units available increased from 2 million people in 2003 to 4 million in 2009. As the rental market continues to tighten and the competition for low-cost housing intensifies, the gap between the demand for and supply of affordable rentals will only increase.
Read more at National League of Cities
American Campus Communities, Inc. (NYSE:ACC) has begun construction on a $24.9 million, off-campus student housing complex adjacent to The University of Texas at Arlington.
The 488-bed project is under construction north of UTA Boulevard near the University’s Maverick Activities Center and is designed as an urban infill community that will compliment the city’s master plan for revitalization of the downtown area and create a more vibrant campus edge. University Centre on UTA Boulevard will be the closest student housing project developed in the off-campus market and will be adjacent to existing on-campus housing.
Texas Apartment News 