A recently published article from the San Antonio Business Journal covers Internacional’s latest transaction.
Since 2017, local multifamily investment company Internacional has bought two apartment communities in the San Antonio area, bringing its number of local properties to nine. With two more communities expected to close by late September, CEO L. Miguel Arce said San Antonio’s slow and steady fundamentals continue to make it a great market to invest in.
The company’s most recently announced acquisition, the 208-unit Sunrise Canyon Apartment Homes in Universal City, was attractive for multiple reasons, Arce said.
“We have some experience in the northeast submarket. It’s more of a solid employment base than other parts of the city. You don’t get the highest-paying jobs out there, but there’s a solid base. It doesn’t see a lot of new development, and from a fundamental standpoint, not a lot of new supply really puts us in a favorable position,” Arce said. “When we look at deals, we look at job growth, visibility, the asset itself obviously, but we also look at how much new supply is in the market. In areas with less new supply, deals do very well.”
Internacional bought Sunrise Canyon for an undisclosed amount from Lowe Enterprises Inc., a Los Angeles-based real estate development and investment company. The property was last assessed by the Bexar County Appraisal District at about $19.4 million. Last year, Internacional bought the Dwell at Legacy, an apartment complex near Stone Oak, from local developer Embrey Partners. The company’s nine San Antonio-area apartment complexes make up a sizable portion of its 40-plus-property portfolio. Arce said the company is under contract on two more apartment complexes in the San Antonio area, whose locations he didn’t specify.
Internacional’s tendency to invest locally has nothing to do with it being based here and everything to do with San Antonio’s fundamentals, Arce said. “We can rely on San Antonio to be a steady growth market. We really like that attribute. It’s not sharp growth, and it’s not sharp decline either. It’s steady and reliable,” he said.
At the same time, the company is comfortable buying in Texas with assets in all four major metros.
“We feel like our backyard is Texas,” Arce said. “Thirty-eight out of the forty some properties we own are in Texas.”
Internacional’s focus is on multifamily investment and some third-party management, Arce said. Its investment appetite varies, looking for all three major asset types: value-add, core and core-plus investments. The company was founded in 1993 as a merchant builder before switching its focus to acquisitions in the early 2000s. Despite the name, none of the company’s capital comes from Mexico or Latin America.