The biggest share — 30% — of the portfolio is located in San Diego. @BlackRock’s $1.6 billion apartment bet signals return of big multifamily deals Investor acquires Camden Property Trust's 11-property Southern California portfolio One of the nation’s largest apartment owners has exited California with a portfolio sale to a BlackRock-managed investment vehicle. Houston-based real estate investment trust Camden Property Trust sold 11 Southern California properties totaling 3,620 apartments for $1.625 billion, or about $449,000 per unit. The sale provides Camden with fresh capital to buy back its stock and double down on faster-growing Sun Belt markets. On the buyer side, the deal adds to growing confidence among apartment investors as property values and rents climb. The portfolio stretches across Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego and San Bernardino counties, giving BlackRock immediate scale in some of Southern California’s most supply-constrained rental markets. The properties were 96% occupied over the past year, with limited concessions and average household incomes of about $134,000 within a mile of the complexes, according to JLL, which represented the seller in the deal. “The significant investor demand for these best-in-class assets in supply-constrained markets underscores the strength of Southern California fundamentals, leading to significant liquidity at scale,” JLL Senior Managing Director Blake Rogers said in a statement. The transaction is the largest U.S. apartment portfolio sale since Blackstone's approximately $10 billion acquisition of Apartment Income REIT in June 2024 and offers one of the clearest signs yet that institutional investors are growing more willing to place large bets on multifamily real estate. National apartment sales volume is up about 20% from a year ago as pricing stabilizes, lending markets improve and a slowdown in construction raises expectations that today’s excess supply will gradually be absorbed, according to CoStar National Director of Multifamily Analytics Grant Montgomery. BlackRock is betting that Southern California’s barriers to new construction, high homeownership costs and concentration of major employment centers will support apartment demand over the long term. The investment manager also secured financing that allows the properties to be sold or refinanced individually, preserving flexibility as market conditions change. Camden, meanwhile, is using the sale to unlock capital tied up in California and redirect it toward debt repayment, stock repurchases and acquisitions in its core Sun Belt markets. The REIT said roughly $900 million of the proceeds would retire balances on its revolving credit facility and commercial paper program after it spent about $423 million repurchasing shares during the first half of the year. Supply-constrained region The sale represents about 16.5% of Southern California’s average annual apartment transaction volume over the past five years based on unit count, an unusually large transfer in a region where institutional-quality properties tend to remain under the same ownership for extended periods. Ten of the 11 properties were developed by Camden and had never previously been publicly marketed. The biggest share — 30% — of the portfolio is located in San Diego. Among the properties is The Camden, a 287-unit Hollywood complex with nearly 39,000 square feet of Equinox-anchored retail, and the 380-unit Camden Crown Valley in Mission Viejo. The portfolio also includes the 469-unit Camden Landmark, accounting for about 5% of Ontario’s market-rate apartment inventory in properties with more than 100 units. The transaction illustrates the contrasting strategies emerging among the apartment sector’s largest investors: BlackRock is acquiring a difficult-to-replicate coastal portfolio, while Camden is concentrating its capital in faster-growing Sun Belt markets. Camden has acquired seven apartment properties for about $645 million in those regions through July. Even so, JLL's Rogers said, “Southern California remains one of the most supply-constrained and institutionally sought-after rental markets in the country, and we expect that dynamic to continue to drive long-term value creation." product.costar.com/suiteapps… via @CoStarNews