We’re pleased to announce that we have invested roughly $4.4 million in a joint venture partnership to acquire the Cedars of San Marcos, a 168-unit garden-style apartment building in San Marcos, Texas, the heart of Hill Country. Fundrise has partnered with RailField Partners to acquire this stabilized apartment community for approximately $15.4 million. Railfield plans to invest roughly $1.5 million to perform common area and unit improvements, and an additional $700,000 in soft costs, with the goal of increasing the property value.
Why we invested
- Great location near Texas State University: The property is roughly a five-minute drive from Texas State University, a rapidly growing institution with 19 consecutive years of record-setting enrollment.
- Stabilized with upside potential: The property is currently fully stabilized. The sponsor plans to invest approximately $2.2 million — including both hard and soft costs — to renovate the interior and exterior of the property in an effort to increase rents for each unit.
- Strong market: San Marcos is one of the fastest growing cities in Texas and in the United States, and the area has seen rapid employment growth, outpacing the country by a factor of six. The area is expected to benefit from continued population growth, job growth, and the merger of the Austin and San Antonio MSAs into a single mega-metro area.
Market spotlight: booming growth in Texas Hill Country
Located just a half-hour southwest of Austin, San Marcos is part of one of the most ascendant metropolitan expanses in the US. “Hill Country” is the comforting name that refers to the rolling landscape alongside Highway 35, the major throughway that bisects Austin, San Marcos, and San Antonio, and has been the cradle for strong economic and cultural growth over the past decade.
Just because San Marcos is sandwiched between the bigger Texas cities doesn’t mean it’s outshined by them. As the point where the state’s Hill Country meets its Coastal Plains, San Marcos sits at the geographical center of this Highway 35 corridor, featuring natural highlights such as the San Marcos Springs, clusters of cacti on the hillsides, and the San Marcos River, which boasts famously clean currents and hosts summer-long caravans of tubers and kayakers. More cinematically inclined residents can find a mural downtown featuring Jeff Bridges as The Big Lebowski’s Dude, a jewel of San Marcos’ rich local art scene.
As Forbes wrote in 2016, the Hill Country range represents “America’s Next Great Metropolis,” and features “a series of rapidly expanding counties and several smaller cities, notably San Marcos... attracting residents and creating jobs at remarkable rates.”
