Hines And Partners Buy 528 Acres For 1,400-Home Community Near Waller

After a year of slow rent growth and high interest rates, apartment owners that have enjoyed years of profitability are seeking improved efficiency through the increased use of technology to centralize operations.

In an effort to keep costs under control, many landlords are looking to make their operations more efficient, hoping new technologies and processes can shave expenses enough to boost the bottom line, even in a tough market.

“If you had a problem property a year ago, you could just sell it,” said Lucas Haldeman, CEO and founder of SmartRent, a proptech firm whose access-control tech has helped accelerate centralization. “Now, I can’t sell it, so I have to manage it. The tenor of multifamily has absolutely shifted to expense control and ancillary revenue, two things we didn’t talk about when rents were skyrocketing.”

Centralization includes numerous stages: placing accountants and management in central offices, creating maintenance teams that work across different properties and using self-guided tours and centralized leasing teams to fill vacancies.  Technology needed to underpin centralization by improving property management, operations and maintenance has been in play for more than a decade.…

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State Farm’s massive regional campus at CityLine in Richardson, Texas, has traded hands.

The 2.2M SF mixed-use property sold to a real estate investment firm created by Robert Sarver, an Arizona businessman and former owner of the Phoenix Suns, according to property records obtained by the Dallas Morning News. 

The sale included four office towers, which are fully leased to State Farm, as well as 120K SF of retail space and a 42K SF medical building. The transaction is the largest office sale in North America so far this year by square footage, per a news release from Newmark. The sales price was not disclosed.

“CityLine is a dynamic development, well-situated to reap long-term appreciation, as the Metroplex continues to grow north,” Newmark Vice Chairman Gary Carr said in a statement. “Highly sought after due to the project’s contractual lease obligations from investment-grade tenancy, CityLine provided investors with capital preservation, coupled with significant…

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In Case You Missed It...

Newmark revised its earnings downward and announced an additional $25M in impending cuts, but it struck an optimistic note on its third-quarter earnings call, saying it is gobbling up market share and faring better than other major brokerages.

“We’ve sort of bottomed out, from an earnings perspective,” Chief Financial Officer Mike Rispoli said Wednesday on Newmark’s Q3 earnings call.  Newmark reported $616M in total revenues in Q3, down from last year's Q3 figure by 7.3%, though it said that should turn around in Q4. Rispoli said…

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