Atlanta company to build 154 rental townhomes in San Antonio

The 16.5-acre community, named Caliza at the Loop, will have a clubhouse, pool, grilling area, playground, and fitness and business centers for residents. It’s unclear what rents will be.

Caliza at the Loop is RangeWater’s second project in San Antonio.

Last year the company bought Aspen Heights, a 284-unit student housing complex at 12839 Berthoud Lane, which it is converting into general rental housing called the Cottages at Leon Creek.

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During the first phase, 131 units were renovated, which are 95 percent leased. RangeWater is preparing to begin leasing for the 153 homes in phase two.

And in March, the company announced that it had acquired Legacy Heights, a 306-unit, garden-style apartment complex on Austin Highway.

“RangeWater is strategically growing across the Sun Belt to meet the high demand for housing,” Chairman and CEO Steven Shores said in a statement. “San Antonio is one of Texas’ fastest-growing cities due to its attractive job market.”

RangeWater — which builds, manages and buys multifamily complexes — launched a built-to-rent, single-family division in late 2020 called Storia and said it would build about 15 such communities in Sun Belt metropolitan areas over the following 18 months.

RangeWater is now managing or developing more than 15,000 single-family rental homes, and built-to-rent accounts for 17 percent of its portfolio, Shores said in an August announcement.

While built-to-rent, single-family homes make up a small slice of new home construction, investors’ interest in them is soaring amid high demand.

Home prices are surging and supply is limited, pricing some potential buyers out of the market and forcing them to continue renting.

The median sale price of a single-family home in the San Antonio area in July was $341,600, up 15.4 percent from a year earlier, according to the San Antonio Board of Realtors.

Inventory rose to 2.7 months in July, an increase from 1.7 months a year earlier but well below the six months of supply that’s generally considered a balance between buyers and sellers.

Millennials are grappling with debt, another factor affecting their ability to buy a home.

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There’s also demand from empty nesters who are downsizing and don’t want to deal with the upkeep of owning a home and individuals or families who are renting apartments and seeking more space.

Home-building giants such as Lennar Corp., D.R. Horton and Highland Homes — as well as smaller companies — are building and acquiring single-family rental homes.

San Antonio-based Embrey plans to build 126 duplex-style homes with 252 units at FM 306 and Common Street near the Gruene historic district.

Also in New Braunfels, Toronto-based Tricon Residential and HHS Residential of Highland Homes plan to build 180 single-family rental homes near The Barndominium venue off Texas 46.

It’s unclear how many built-to-rent-homes are under construction in San Antonio.

A recent analysis by RentCafe estimated there are 960 single-family rentals in local built-to-rent communities. The rental search website ranked San Antonio seventh among the 20 cities with the most single-family rentals.

CoreLogic, a real estate data provider that tracks single-family rents across the U.S., said prices in June were up 13.4 percent from the same month last year.

Rent growth has slowed compared with earlier this year, potentially because of concerns about a recession. But “as the cost of owning a home continues to grow significantly, many Americans are shut out of the housing market, forcing them to keep renting,” CoreLogic said.

The Miami, Orlando, and San Diego metro areas had the biggest year-over-year rent increases in June at 35.5 percent, 23.3 percent and 15.2 percent, respectively.

Dallas, at 13.1 percent, and Austin, at 12.4 percent, were also among the top 10.

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