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SELMA, Texas, Oct. 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — Embrey Partners, LLC, a San Antonio-based diversified real estate investment company, has expanded its multifamily portfolio in Central Texas with the acquisition of Retreat at Chelsea Park in Selma, Texas.
Embrey’s purchase of the high-quality, 280-unit property built in 2006 closed on October 27 in a sale brokered by Patton Jones of Newmark. Embrey will benefit from the community’s prime location along the I-35 corridor in the northeast sector of San Antonio’s metropolitan area that has seen high rental demand in recent years. The nationally recognized, award-winning Embrey Management Services will take over management of the community.
Retreat at Chelsea Park is the first closing of Embrey’s recently introduced acquisition group led by Alex Sampson, Vice President of Acquisitions. The newly formed group is aggressively seeking multifamily procurement opportunities across high-growth Texas and Sunbelt markets. Click to read more at www.prnewswire.com.
3D-printed housing has arrived and is ready for the big time. Homebuilding giant Lennar Homes has committed to building the largest neighborhood of 3D-printed homes yet developed. Breaking ground in early 2022 in the Austin area, the 100-home innovative community is co-designed by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, using ICON’s building technology.
The announcement deepens a relationship that began with Lennar’s investment in Austin-based ICON’s recent $207-million financing round and offers a promising path toward delivering affordable, technology-driven homes that meet rising demand.
There is a shortage of housing in the country, and labor and materials shortages are a frustrating bottleneck for the homebuilders. 3D printing construction has the potential to deliver better, more resilient, more sustainable and energy-efficient homes at stunning speeds, with less waste and more design freedom.
Lennar’s investment in ICON’s Series B financing round in August was facilitated by LENX, which drives a focused strategy within Lennar to integrate technology solutions across the home building industry. Click to read more at www.forbes.com.
One of the largest economic development projects in the history of Texas is close to being built in Williamson County.
Larger than any single corporate enterprise in Central Texas before it, Samsung is expected to build a 6 million-square-foot facility that will bring 1,800 higher-paying jobs to the area.
The project includes $6 billion in infrastructure, land and building costs and $11 billion worth of personal property, machinery and equipment. The approximately 1,288 acres of property for the project is south of Hwy. 79 and west of FM 973, southwest of downtown Taylor.
Williamson County Judge Bill Gravell Jr. on Sept. 7 told Community Impact Newspaper negotiations and work on the project have been accomplished daily since January, when county officials hosted Samsung executives at Dell Diamond in Round Rock.
“What we have to offer is the perfect combination of outstanding schools, safe communities and quality of life,” Gravell said. “We have an existing world-class workforce and an ecosystem around it.”
Gravell said along with the Samsung jobs, thousands of contractors will also work at the facility. According to Williamson County, the project will also provide 6,500-10,000 direct construction jobs while the plant is being built, and Gravell said the existing Samsung plant in North Austin off Parmer Lane served as motivation to work to attract that kind of largescale economic mobility. Click to read more at www.communityimpact.com.
A city-led rezoning process that could determine whether Lions Municipal Golf Course will remain in operation on Austin’s west side is continuing, while landowner The University of Texas is potentially eyeing the historic site’s redevelopment.
The city has been working for months to rezone four separate UT-owned tracts after Austin City Council initiated a process to set “appropriate uses” for the properties last December. The lands, including the Lions course, or Muny, are longtime UT assets, but new zoning recommendations for the properties are being developed by city staff.
The largest of the four areas in question are the Brackenridge tracts, including the 141-acre Muny, the West Austin Youth Association’s facilities, and dozens of acres along the Colorado River now home to a university apartment complex and field laboratory. The nearby Gateway Apartments property off West Sixth Street, the West Pickle Research Campus off MoPac to the north and the Montopolis Research Center on Montopolis Drive are also set to be rezoned. Click to read more at www.communityimpact.com.
While other major cities across the country have witnessed dramatic upticks in office vacancy due to the pandemic and changing nature of the workplace, the office market in San Antonio has remained relatively steady throughout the last couple of years. The market has performed well enough in the last quarter, that San Antonio was listed as one of the top 10 office markets in the country by the National Association of REALTORS.
The most recent office vacancy figure for San Antonio sits just below 11%, according to a Q3 report from NAI Partners. While not exactly the strongest number, the one thing that San Antonio can boast is consistency. Over the last ten years, the San Antonio office market has ebbed and flowed between 9% and 12% total office vacancy. The highest vacancy level was in 2012, during the Great Recession, while the low was in 2018 as the country’s real estate market was booming.
Essentially, San Antonio hasn’t had to face the challenge of having a major glut of vacant office space like other major cities have.
A positive sign is the fact that San Antonio’s vacancy has decreased in last quarter, inching just below the 11% threshold. According to the NAI Partners report, leasing volume increased by 45% quarter-over-quarter with 700,000 square feet of office claimed during that period. Net absorption in the third quarter was around 8%, or roughly 390,000 square feet. Another 203,000 square feet of new office product was delivered in Q3 2021.
The NAI Partners report credits San Antonio’s stability to the quick economy recovery across Texas. While many other major metros witnessed ongoing stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns, Texas reopened quickly, giving its economy a head start on recovery. The National Association of REALTORS points to San Antonio’s close proximity to the booming (and expensive) Austin market.
But there could be much more growth in San Antonio in the coming years as Austin becomes too crowded and prohibitively expensive. NAI Partners highlights Tesla’s move from Palo Alto, California to Austin as a major boost to the regional economy and expansion of the Texas auto industry. Toyota and Navistar currently have a presence in San Antonio and the city is well-positioned to more investment in manufacturing and corporate offices in the near future.
Austin has lost a bit of its luster on an annual list of the country’s hottest commercial real estate markets.
The latest Emerging Trends in Real Estate report from professional services firm PwC and the nonprofit Urban Land Institute puts Austin at No. 4 among the U.S. commercial real estate markets to watch in 2022. Austin ranked second in last year’s report and first in the 2019 report. Since 2010, Austin has appeared at No. 7 or above in the closely watched Emerging Trends report.
The report, released October 14, bases its rankings on interviews with hundreds of commercial real estate professionals.
The report groups Austin with four other metro areas in a first-time category called “supernovas.” The four others are Nashville; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; Boise, Idaho; and Jacksonville, Florida.
“In astronomy, a supernova is the explosion of a star that creates unusual brilliance, but more generally the term refers to things that explode into prominence or popularity. So it is with the five metro areas in this new category,” according to the report.
“Austin has long been among the brightest stars in the constellation and a darling for investors and developers alike, first breaking into the [top 10] markets to watch in 2009,” the report adds. Click to read more at www.austin.culturemap.com.
