Category: Central/South Texas News DO NOT USE

East Austin Office Mid-Rise OK’d by City Council

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The planned redevelopment of the Fair Market event venue at 1100-1108 E. Fifth St. can officially move forward, although the case has stoked debate about the affordable housing needs of rapidly changing East Austin.

Austin City Council on Nov. 4 gave final approval to the rezoning request for the project. On the drawing board is a six-story, 150,617-square-foot office building with ground-floor retail a couple of blocks east of I-35.

11E5 LLC and Endeavor Real Estate Group are the developers.

Right now, Fair Market is a 17,000-square-foot event venue that opened in 2014 and has been used for South by Southwest activations, Formula One events, weddings and more. Before Fair Market, the warehouse was home to Texas Office Products and Supply.

The rezoning request faced pushback from affordable housing advocates who bemoaned the lack of such housing on site. City staffers calculated if the 150,000 square feet was used for housing, it could result in 38 to 113 affordable housing units, based on the percentage of a hypothetical development dedicated to income-restricted units.

“On the surface this looks like a win but, in reality, it comes at the cost of the opportunity to build an additional 38 to 113 affordable housing units in the Saltillo [transit oriented development area], where we already have a plan in place to create affordable housing,” city staffers wrote in a density bonus comparison document. Click to read more at www.endeavor-re.com.

52,000 Apartments Were Completed in Major Texas Cities Over the Last 12 Months

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Developers have invested $16 Billion in the Dallas-Fort Worth apartment market so far this year, the most of any major metro in the country.

To meet the tremendous demand for new housing across much of Texas, developers have been adding tens of thousands of new apartments throughout the state’s major metros at a feverish pace. There has been so much construction activity, that just in the last 12 months, developers have completed over 52,500 apartments in the Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and San Antonio markets, a new report from CBRE indicates. And by and large, these units are getting scooped up renters rather quickly.

The latest stats on the Texas multifamily market are substantial. To help illustrate how much new construction there has been in Texas, the report indicates that the top five markets for recent deliveries — which includes New York, Houston, Dallas, Washington, DC and Los Angeles — account for 27% of all the nation’s new apartments in the last 12 months. And while over 50,000 new apartments were built across the state’s largest metros in the last year, nearly 85,000 units were absorbed during this time.

Breaking it down by each market, the completion numbers are staggering. In the last 12 months, Houston has seen 15,600 new units added to its market, Dallas has had 13,600 new apartments delivered, Fort Worth saw 8,100 residences completed, Austin witnessed the completion of nearly 10,000 units and San Antonio had another 5,400 added to its total inventory.

But all of this new construction is coming at a cost. While the biggest cities in Texas have seen a steep increase in total supply of apartments in the last year, rental prices are also moving in a vertical direction.

According to the report, four of the highlighted cities have seen double-digit rent growth in the last 12 months. Austin rents have increased by an eye-watering 18% year-over-year according to CBRE, Dallas rent costs are up by 11.7%, San Antonio apartments are up 10.8% while Fort Worth rent prices have increased by 10%. El Paso rent growth is just under 10% while Houston’s stands at 8.5%.

The high absorption rates and quickly increasing rent prices have lured a lot of investment to Texas cities. The Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex has actually led the nation year-to-date for the amount of dollars invested in new rentals: $16 billion. Developers have invested $7.38 billion in the Houston apartment market so far this year, while Austin has seen $5.16 billion invested in new development.

If you’re a recent transplant to Texas shell-shocked by the prices and competition for new rentals, you’re not alone. So long as Texas’s population growth and economy continue on an upward trajectory, there will likely be similar increases in new apartment deliveries, absorption and rent growth in the coming years.

Austin Council Signs Off on Project Connect ‘Rules of the Rails’

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After a week’s delay and extended deliberation on the dais, Austin City Council approved an updated version of the document setting the responsibilities for Project Connect’s development.

The joint powers agreement involves three Project Connect stakeholders: the city of Austin, Capital Metro, and the Austin Transit Partnership, or ATP. Sam Sargent, ATP director of strategy, said last week that the document represents the “rules of the rails” for the $7.1 billion transit expansion.

The three entities gathered last week at the Austin Convention Center to hammer out the final agreement but were forced to delay due to technical difficulties. Council took up its approval of the document, and several members’ revisions to the plan, Nov. 4.

In addition to detailing the roles of the ATP, Capital Metro and city officials and staff, portions of the document also tie to equity, land use and community engagement as the expansive transit project moves ahead. Several edits to the agreement approved by council this week also reflect commentary from residents and mobility groups that had previously expressed reservations. Click to read more at www.communityimpact.com.

Austin Nails Ranking as One of Nation’s Top Commercial Real Estate Markets

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Unless you’ve been living way off the grid the past couple of years, you’re fully aware that Austin ranks among the hottest residential real estate markets in the U.S. What you may not realize, though, is that it’s also among the country’s hottest commercial real estate markets.

In a recently released report, the National Association of Realtors identifies Austin as one of the top 10 commercial real estate markets in the U.S. San Antonio is the only other Texas market to appear on the unranked list.

Austin’s commercial real estate sector has benefited from an influx of companies, particularly in the tech industry, that are moving out of California. Among the relocating businesses are Cangshan Cutlery, F45 Training, Green Dot, and Markaaz.

Factors in Austin’s favor that the report outlines include:

  • Office occupancy has grown, rather than shrunk, in the past 12 months. Across the country, the COVID-19 pandemic has hammered the office sector, with millions of Americans telecommuting rather than heading to a workplace.
  • In the multifamily segment (part of the commercial real estate sector), Austin enjoys one of the most robust levels of construction activity in the country.
  • Advertised rents at multifamily properties are up 21.2 percent on a year-over-year basis. Click to read more at www.austin.culturemap.com

Embrey Acquires Retreat at Chelsea Park in Selma, TX

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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.

Williamson County Officials Make Final Moves Toward Landing $17B Samsung Facility

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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.