Multifamily development and transactions haven’t taken a breather yet

Despite predictions about an impending softening in multifamily construction, builders and developers continue to expand their market reach and portfolios. Here are some of the more prominent projects and deals announced within the past few weeks:

Crescent Communities is developing a 5.3-acre, 374-unit luxury apartment community called Crescent Westshore in Tampa, Fla. This is the fifth multifamily community that Crescent has started in Florida in the past few years, and the third in Tampa. Crescent Warehouse is expected to open in the summer of 2016.

Boston-based Intercontinental Real Estate Corporation and San Diego-based MG Properties Group have jointly acquired the 768-unit Madison Park Apartments in West Anaheim, Calif. This is the largest property, by units, to be purchased in Southern California since 2013. The seller was Institutional Property Advisors. The price was not disclosed.

The Picerne Group has joined forces with Rockwood Capital and The Muller Company to build ELEVEN10 West, a five-story, 260-unit rental community on 2.76 acres in Orange, Calif. TCA Architects designed the building, which will include 43 studios, 117 one-bedroom apartments and 224,293 rentable sf. ELEVEN10 West is being designed to coincide with the City of Orange’s general plan’s mixed-use vision created in 2010. It will open for leasing in the summer of 2017.

Asset Plus Cos., the nation’s largest privately owned apartment and student housing developer, on March 17 opened Arrabella, a 232-unit luxury rental townhouse community in west Houston. Arrabella features six one- to three-bedroom floor plans. As of early April the building was 15% preleased. However, this could be Asset’s last Houston project for a while: its CEO and chairman, Michael McGrath, told the Houston Business Journal that his company would postpone building new multifamily projects in Houston until oil prices recover.

SWBC Real Estate is developing a 304-unit garden style community in Dallas called Timberview Ranch, which should be completed by the end of next year. Galaxy Builders is the designated GC on this project. Earlier this year, SWBC broke ground on a 300-unit apartment complex within Twin Creeks at Alamo Ranch in Far West San Antonio. 

Asbury Park, N.J.-based developer J.G. Petrucci Co. plans to break ground this summer on a 68-unit apartment building at the Chalfont train station in Bucks County, Pa. The developer will raze what had been an institution that housed people with brain injuries. The architect on this project is Minno & Wasko, based in Lambertville, N.J.

Kushner Companies last month closed on a portfolio of 16 buildings scattered throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn, N.Y., for which it paid $131.5 million. The sellers, Stone Street Properties and HIG Realty Partners, paid $73 million for that portfolio in 2012, according to the Real Deal. The deal was brokered by Marcus & Millichap.

Downtown Detroit is about to get its first new apartment development in a generation. Village Green, a luxury apartment owner and operation, has received approval to construct Statler City Apartments, for which it plans to break ground in the second quarter of next year and complete by the fourth quarter of 2017. Statler City Apartments will be a mid-rise, mixed-use community with 235 apartments and penthouses. It will be located on Detroit’s Grand Circus Park, near the People Mover line and M1 Rail.