Weidner Apartment Homes, based in Kirkland, Washington, has purchased Monterra Village, a 550-unit apartment complex located in Fort Worth’s fast-growing Alliance Town Center. The property, sold by Hillwood Multifamily, a division of Hillwood, closed on December 18 for an undisclosed amount. Monterra Village spans 35 acres and includes 541,000 square feet of rentable space, offering 1-3 bedroom apartments and townhomes.
Weidner’s acquisition is part of its strategy to expand its portfolio, now totaling over 6,100 units across the U.S. The company is expected to upgrade the apartment interiors, similar to other projects, to boost rental income. Fort Worth’s rising population and strong demand for multifamily housing make this a promising investment.
The Alliance Town Center development surrounding Monterra Village includes over 1 million square feet of retail, office, and restaurant space, as well as two hospital campuses. This growing area offers significant potential for real estate growth, making it an attractive market for investors.
The Dallas-Fort Worth metro ranks as the top emerging real estate market across the United States and Canada, with the highest investment and development potential.
That’s according to the 2025 Emerging Trends in Real Estate report from the Urban Land Institute and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The closely watched annual report compiles data from more than 2,000 industry experts who are surveyed to “highlight the most pressing topics shaping the commercial real estate landscape.”
DFW ranked as a top real estate market in part due to its healthy recovery from the pandemic, a diverse economic base and a growing population that supports continued real estate investment. The Metroplex last topped this list in 2019. It’s floated among the top few spots in the past three years and consistently ranked in the top 10 for the past six.
For its 46th edition, the report predicts the real estate market is on the cusp of the next cyclical upturn, as inflation begins to ease. That contrasts with last year’s theme, “The Great Reset,” suggesting the industry must establish new norms in a post-pandemic world and will require investors must envision a different future if they want to survive.
“The skies are finally clearing over commercial real estate markets, even if some dark clouds still linger,” the 2025 report says. “Industry people are more sanguine than a year ago, though also realistic. Better times are ahead, but the healing will take time.”
“While challenges persist across the real estate sector, there are signs of improvement after years of hardship,” Andrew Alperstein, a partner with PwC’s U.S. real estate practice, said in a statement. He added that industry optimism has grown in the past year.
The Sun Belt continues to rank highly. The other top four markets were either in Texas or Florida. Miami ranked No. 2, followed by Houston and Tampa-St. Petersburg. More widely, the “Super Sun Belt” accounted for 13 of the top 20 markets this year.
Additionally, DFW is home to 23 Fortune 500 headquarters and is known for attracting businesses from a variety of sectors, including insurance, telecommunications, technology, energy, health care, and logistics.
“This combination of affordability, growth, and economic diversity should continue to attract new residents and businesses to DFW,” the ULI/PwC report says.
This favorable ranking comes on the heels of a JLL report that found zero major office groundbreakings across DFW in the third quarter, the first time that has happened in more than a decade. But Dallas is far from alone in this matter and a reduction in inventory could actually help leasing.
The report also noted favorable trends in major coastal markets. For example, New York climbed to No. 11, up from No. 31 last year.
This article was originally published by our content partners at the Dallas Business Journal. You can read the original article here.
Dallas plant of aerospace and defense manufacturing company RTX, formerly Raytheon Technologies, has been sold to Georgia-based Asbury Automotive Group. The 15-acre site at 6000 Lemmon Ave. near Love Field will now house luxury vehicles like Porsches.
The purchase price along with other information about the transaction was not disclosed. RTX declined to provide details about the terms of the lease, and Asbury released word of the deal in a news release Tuesday..
In 1946, a factory was built and its value based on the Dallas Central Appraisal District is approximately $17. 5 million. After some time, Asbury Automotive will build a Porsche dealership on this site. The old industrial plant is expected to start being demolished starting from 2025 with the construction ending in mid-2027.
This will also allow Asbury to construct a state-of-the-art Volvo service garage adjacent to the Park Place Volvo at the intersection of Lemmon Avenue and Inwood Road.
The Mercedes-Benz and Porsche dealershipsThe sale comes after RTX last year announced it would close its Dallas plant in notices filed with the Texas Workforce Commission. With upwards of more than 6,000 employees in the area, according to the website of the company.
Before Raytheon’s ownership, the industrial plant had belonged to Texas Instruments who made the first commercially produced silicon transistor from a Lemmon Avenue facility that existed on the property in the 1950s. “The company also designed and manufactured the first transistor radio.”. very close to the old Raytheon was located, belonged to Asbury Automotive.
Asbury Automotive took ownership of the two dealerships after it purchased eight dealerships in the Dallas-Fort Worth area from Park Place at a cost of $735 million in 2020. As the Area Vice President at Park Place Dealerships, Tony Carimi says that Dallas people love expensive cars, and in his company, they try their best for clients to have maximum comfort and feel that they are special while driving their luxury cars.
The Lemmon Avenue plant was taken over by Raytheon in 1997 when Texas Instruments sold its defense unit to them.
Sherman Roberts, a real estate developer from Dallas, pleaded guilty to bribing two former city officials. He did this to get support for his apartment projects, according to federal authorities. Roberts, 70, used to be the president of City Wide Community Development Corporation. He admitted to paying bribes.The bribes were given to former Dallas Mayor Pro Tem Dwaine Caraway. He also paid bribes to former City Council Member Carolyn Davis.
Source: Sherman Roberts (right) and Dwaine Caraway (Facebook, Getty)
In return, Davis lobbied for Roberts’ projects, including Serenity Place, Runyon Springs, and Patriot’s Crossing. She pushed for low-income housing tax credits and voted to approve a $1.9 million loan for Serenity Place. Court records reveal Roberts texted Davis shortly after the vote, celebrating their financial gain. About a month later, Davis demanded more money, which Robert agreed to provide.
Roberts collaborated with Caraway to prevent any competing bids for development and secure the Patriot’s Crossing project for cash payments and a monthly stipend. In 2019, Caraway was convicted of conspiracy and tax evasion, receiving a prison sentence exceeding four years; Davis had already pleaded guilty to bribery but died before his own sentencing.
Roberts now faces up to five years in federal prison, with sentencing scheduled for March 2025. His case is part of a broader bribery scandal involving multiple developers, including Devin Hall and Russell Hamilton, both of whom also faced charges for similar schemes.
A city panel last week sided with Danny Le and Akber Meghani, two builders whose permits Dallas officials pulled after the builders constructed non-complying structures in the Elm Thicket-Northpark neighborhood. The panel acknowledged the city’s role in the permitting mistake and weighed violations concerning height restrictions, roofing standards, and land use.
The panel rescinded Meghan’s permit revocation, citing the city’s role in the permitting error. The city did not act quickly enough on the violations and allowed construction, referencing documentation that showed the site’s land use did, in fact, originally allow for duplexes. The board members voted to hold the case until the next meeting in November, showing they want to review documents again. Thirteen of 172 permits were still out of compliance, and six property owners have not taken any action.
Community residents asked the board of adjustments to uphold the city’s decision, citing that the builders, in particular Le-, knew full well the constructions were illegal. The City Council voted in 2022 to change zoning in order to prevent displacement and preserve this area’s legacy as a historical black neighborhood.
For more than five years, legacy residents in the Elm Thicket/Northpark neighborhood in Dallas had fought to cap the size of new builds in the historically Black community. The city passed rules in 2022 to limit home size but appeared to fail to update the zoning information in their system when approving those construction permits. Preliminary fact-finding showed that permit applications for projects in the Elm Thicket-Northpark neighborhood reviewed between October 12, 2022, and June 2, 2023 used outdated zoning information, and some permits may have been approved in error.
Staff identified 29 homes to investigate; 19 violated the new zoning. Those developers are appealing the orders to the Board of Adjustments. One said it could cost another $100,000 to bring his construction into compliance. Interim City Manager Kim Tolbert is looking at larger systemic changes to ensure this type of error does not happen in the future.
The Dallas Board of Adjustment has scolded city officials for issuing permits and plans using outdated codes that resulted in 14 stop work orders and 17 more letters advising builders in the Dallas Love Field-area neighborhood of Elm Thicket that their projects didn’t comply with updated zoning passed almost two years ago.
The call for a decision delay or disapproval elicited disappointment from residents who spoke on behalf of the Save Elm Thicket activist group, as little precedence exists in the city to preserve historic neighborhoods and said progress comes at the expense of Black and Brown neighborhoods. The Elm Thicket/Northpark neighborhood is an old Freedman’s Community that is important for its character to be preserved, displacement, and gentrification.
