Spirit Investment Partners and Strategic Value Partners have acquired two newly built apartment communities totaling 895 units in Houston and Denton, Texas, betting that well-located Sunbelt properties caught up in a wave of new supply can be bought below replacement cost and stabilized.
The joint venture bought Resia Ten Oaks, a 573-unit community in Houston, and Resia Rayzor Ranch, a 322-unit property in Denton, from Resia, the U.S. multifamily arm of Brazilian developer MRV&Co, according to a release distributed via PR Newswire. The purchase price was not disclosed. Both properties were completed in 2024 and feature Class A finishes and amenities.
Oaktree Capital Management provided acquisition financing for the deal, which was arranged by Jamie Leachman and Carter Wroblewski of JLL.
Buying into an oversupplied market
Both Houston and Denton have seen elevated new apartment construction in recent years, which the buyers said slowed the two properties’ lease-up even though the underlying assets are sound. “This transaction reflects our strategy of investing in high-quality real assets where strong underlying fundamentals are overshadowed by periods of market dislocation,” said Mike Ungari, Strategic Value Partners’ senior vice president and global head of real estate.
Tom Scott of Spirit Investment Partners said the deal fits a broader pattern the firm is chasing. “We’re finding more opportunities like these, where well conceived projects ran into oversupply headwinds and struggled to reach stabilization,” Scott said.
Spirit Investment Partners, founded in 2011, has acquired or built more than 7,000 multifamily units with an estimated value above $1.2 billion. Strategic Value Partners is a much larger institutional investor, managing roughly $21 billion in assets across credit and real asset strategies. Pairing a smaller multifamily-focused operator with a large institutional capital partner is a common structure for these lease-up acquisitions: the operator brings local market knowledge and day-to-day management, while the capital partner and its lender, in this case Oaktree, provide the balance-sheet scale to acquire the properties outright.
The seller, Resia, is the U.S. multifamily development platform of MRV&Co, one of Brazil’s largest homebuilders, which has been expanding into U.S. Sunbelt apartment development in recent years. Selling newly delivered properties before they reach full stabilization allows a developer like Resia to recycle capital into new projects rather than carry lease-up risk on its own balance sheet, even if it means accepting a lower price than a stabilized asset would command.
What it means
The deal is another example of institutional capital targeting recently built Sunbelt apartment properties that have struggled to lease up amid a construction wave, a dynamic RealtyWire has tracked in data showing large apartment buildings captured the majority of last year’s multifamily completions, much of it concentrated in high-growth Southern and Western metros. Buyers like Spirit and Strategic Value are effectively betting that Houston and Denton’s population and job growth will eventually absorb the excess supply, allowing assets purchased below replacement cost to appreciate once rents stabilize. The characterization of the deal as attractively priced comes from the buyers themselves in the release; without a disclosed purchase price, RealtyWire cannot independently verify the discount to replacement cost the buyers are implying. What to watch: whether Spirit and Strategic Value pursue additional distressed lease-up acquisitions in Sunbelt markets, and how quickly the two Resia properties reach stabilized occupancy as Houston and Denton work through their respective supply pipelines.
