Western Wealth Capital has acquired two multi-family residential communities in Dallas and Houston, adding 939 apartments to its rapidly growing U.S. portfolio.

The North Vancouver-based company says the transaction closed on Aug. 15. Financial details were not disclosed.

The acquisition is WWC’s fifth in Dallas and seventh in Houston, the latter a market the company entered only a year ago. WWC’s current portfolio includes 46 multi-family rental buildings comprising more than 11,000 units in Texas and in the Phoenix area.

When WWC entered the Houston market in July 2018, its total portfolio comprised 32 multi-family rental buildings with more than 6,800 units.

In keeping with WWC’s value-add focus, the new acquisitions were built in 1980 and 1976 and most apartment units still retain original interior features. WWC says this provides substantial value-add opportunities such as interior upgrades and in-suite washer/dryer installations.

The company says rents are disparate among like-units and well below the immediate competitive set average in the markets.

Western Wealth Capital likes Houston, Dallas

WWC says it has identified Dallas and Houston as two key markets for potential future investment. In both cities, job and population growth are driving vacancy rates and rental prices in an environment with a large inventory of undervalued and under-performing multi-family properties.

“Houston and Dallas currently rank in the top-five cities for both job and population growth in the U.S., and we believe now is the perfect time to invest and create value in these markets,” said Western Wealth Capital chief executive officer Janet LePage in a prepared statement.

The most recent acquisitions were brokered by Newmark Knight Frank (NKF), and Clint Duncan and Matt Phillips with CBRE’s Multifamily Team in Houston.

WWC most recently purchased a Dallas community called The Brandt, a 504-unit rental property from InterCapital Group. It is located about 13 kilometres from DFW International Airport and the company plans to spend about five years upgrading the 34 buildings on the site.

It has also remained active in Arizona, purchasing both the 183-unit Serafina at South Mountain in Phoenix, and the 198-unit Artisan Park in Glendale earlier in 2019.

WWC’s transactions, strategy

Including properties which have since been divested, WWC has transacted on 65 multi-family properties in the U.S. Southwest, representing a total purchase price of $1.3 billion and more than 13,900 units. Most of those transactions have completed in the last three years.

Since inception, WWC has completed over $1.8 billion in real estate transactions.

WWC is Phoenix’s second-largest multi-family owner-operator by both number of buildings and units.

In a previous release, Western Wealth Capital described its value-add strategy: “We acquire undervalued multi-family rental properties; carefully allocate capital to accretive improvements; optimize operations to increase the asset’s net cash flow and valuation; refinance to return equity to investors; and, when appropriate, divest.”