Cedar Street, Quartz Lake JV Targets Infill Multifamily Opportunities

The hyperactive multifamily deal market continued Thursday with the $300 million joint venture announced between Cedar Street Cos. and Quartz Lake Capital, to target infill multifamily development opportunities.

The joint venture will develop projects ranging in size from $75 million to $125 million and located in infill urban target markets, which include Southern California, South Florida and the upper Midwest, among others. The joint venture’s target level of equity investment translates to a gross multifamily development portfolio of approximately $1 billion.

Cedar Street Cos. is a vertically integrated real estate investment, development, and management platform, and Quartz Lake Capital, a private equity real estate investment manager.

Quartz Lake Capital focuses on value-add and opportunistic equity investments in existing and development assets in primary and liquid secondary markets in the US, with a predisposition to urban markets with live/work/play environments and infill suburban submarkets.

This partnership follows a JV between Equity Residential and Toll Brothers to develop apartments in certain US markets. The building environment has turned favorable for such projects. Earlier this month Sherwood Lumber chief operating officer Kyle Little told CNBC that a drop in lumber prices has invigorated demand for commercial building projects, especially for multifamily product.

“Over the last three weeks we’ve seen renewed interest,” Little said on CNBC’s The Exchange. “Our renewed interest is now turning into actual orders and people placing business here for the second half of this year, most notably in the commercial segment and into the multifamily unit segment.”

Cedar currently manages a portfolio of multifamily real estate in excess of $1.5 billion, totaling more than 5,000 units across several markets, including: Chicago, San Diego, Portland, Minneapolis and Cleveland.