Multifamily Monday: The Hottest Intersection in Houston?

Thanks to changing dynamics nearby, the crossing of Fondren and Westheimer is seeing an enormous amount of activity, especially in the multifamily sector. (Open up your sidewalk kiosk before the Girl Scouts show up.)

The Hendricks-Berkadia team (led by managing partners Greg Austin, in jeans which is the true mark of success in our book, and Chip Nash, grey shirt) is right in the thick of it, including selling the hard NEC to Lennar Multifamily recently. Lennar plans to build Crest at Fondren Apartments there, a 338-unit community opening next year. Hunington is redeveloping Vargos on the Lake just north of that, and CBRE bought Old Farm Apartments just east. The 36-acre tract housing Westpoint Apartments is under contract and closing in July (the gents suspect it’ll be redeveloped mixed-use).

But that’s not all: Greg tells us his team is listing the 10-acre Victoria Place site (in blue here, it surrounds the Lennar site—in yellow—and has access to both Westheimer and Fondren) for sale. It’s been getting an amazing amount of interest—Hendricks-Berkadia signed 70 confidentiality agreements in the first week—and will probably go under agreement in the next 30 days. (The takeaway here is if you have a secret you need to confess, these guys are good at keeping things private.) Greg says the property will either be redeveloped or heavy value-add.

Greg tells us everyone thought 2013 was multifamily’s peak, but his team has even more activity now than last year. That includes nearly 10 deals under contract at the moment, like the massive 5,704-unit national portfolio trading to one buyer. He says they thought they’d sell some properties off piecemeal, and multiple buyers were chomping at the bit hoping for 376-unit Stonebrook in Baytown. But the entire portfolio received a price 15% over expectations.