Camden Aquires Two Austin Properties as Part of $261M Texas Portfolio

By Camelia Bulea, Associate Editor

As of last week, Camden Property Trust owns eight high-quality apartment communities throughout the state of Texas—specifically, in the Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio metropolitan areas. These consist of 2,957 apartment homes that were built three years ago and have an average occupancy of 95 percent.

The Austin portfolio consists of two properties—a 272-unit Brushy Creek community in Cedar Park and the 496-unit Shadow Brook on Slaughter Lane—which were sold by Verde Apartment Communities, who left the Austin market. Before selling the last two properties in Austin, Verde sold its 336-unit Verde Oak Park property to Colonial Properties Trust for $28.4 million.

Although the transaction price for these properties wasn’t disclosed, the company’s press release states that the eight recent acquisitions total $261 million. Camden renamed the two most-recent Austin acquisitions to Camden Shadow Brook and Camden Brushy Creek, adding them to its portfolio that also includes the $35.2 million, 348-unit Camden Amber Oaks; the 253-unit Camden South Congress; the $27 million Camden Circle C; Camden Soneleigh and Camden Gaines Ranch.

Camden Fund—20 percent of which is owned by Camden Properties—has acquired three additional apartment communities from the same portfolio in the Houston and San Antonio metropolitan areas. Currently, these are under contract for approximately $59 million and are expected to close during the third quarter of 2011.

With these Texas transactions, the company will become even more present in the local real estate markets, which, according to Camden’s vice president of fund and asset management, “are among the top metro areas in the nation for future expected job growth and population growth, which drives demand for rental housing.”

A recent report released by Business Insider ranks Austin ninth-worst in the country for housing price growth in the last six years. The city’s housing market is expected to grow even more slowly in the next five years, at about 1.2 percent as compared to the average of 2.63 percent growth recorded since 2005.