Multifamily activity keeps rolling
Capital and development activity in multifamily hasn’t paused — large managers are still expanding and lenders are funding big projects. Willow Bridge kept its spot among the largest managers, Affinius provided a $144 million construction loan for a Santa Ana apartment project, and a California buyer closed on seven Western Slope manufactured‑home parks, all signs of selective but real sector movement (globenewswire.com) (rebusinessonline.com) (aspendailynews.com).
The apartment business keeps producing a strange split-screen: financing is tight in plenty of places, but three deals announced this week show money still moving into rentals at very different scales. One company is managing nearly a quarter-million units, one project just landed a $144 million construction loan in Santa Ana, and one California buyer quietly assembled seven manufactured-home parks on Colorado’s Western Slope. (nmhc.org) (rebusinessonline.com) (aspendailynews.com) Start with the biggest operator. Willow Bridge Property Company said on April 10 that it held its No. 3 spot on the 2026 National Multifamily Housing Council Top 50 managers list and now manages 244,457 units nationwide. (globenewswire.com) That ranking matters because the National Multifamily Housing Council list is one of the industry’s main scoreboards, and the 2026 edition says the top 50 managers oversee 24% of U.S. apartments. This year’s list also started counting built-to-rent homes, which makes apples-to-apples comparisons a little tougher and the scale a little bigger. (nmhc.org) Willow Bridge was not just holding ground on management. The company also moved up to No. 20 on the National Multifamily Housing Council developer list with 2,473 construction starts in 2025. (globenewswire.com) Then there is the lending side, where a single Orange County project pulled in nine figures. Affinius Capital received a three-year, floating-rate construction loan of $144 million for The Carina, a 408-unit apartment development in Santa Ana. (rebusinessonline.com) (multihousingnews.com) The lender on that deal was QuadReal Property Group, and JLL Capital Markets arranged the financing. The project is part of the MainPlace Mall repositioning, which means an old shopping center is being rebuilt into a mixed-use district with apartments added to the retail footprint. (commercialobserver.com) (multihousingnews.com) The third piece of the picture is smaller in unit count but sharper in its local impact. Aspen Daily News reported that California-based Primrose bought seven manufactured-home parks on Colorado’s Western Slope, and Aspen Journalism said the portfolio totals more than 700 homesites. (aspendailynews.com) (aspenjournalism.org) One of those parks is a 39-unit community in Rifle that Primrose bought in December, and the other six are in the Grand Valley. Mark Leary, Primrose’s president, confirmed the purchases but declined to describe the company’s plans for the communities. (aspenjournalism.org) (aspendailynews.com) Manufactured-home parks sit in a different corner of housing than a 408-unit new build in Santa Ana, but investors have been moving into that corner too. The Private Equity Stakeholder Project says institutional investors accounted for 23% of manufactured-home purchases in 2020 and 2021, up from 13% in 2017 through 2019. (pestakeholder.org) Put together, these moves show where the market is still functioning. Big managers are still consolidating scale, lenders are still backing projects in high-demand California submarkets, and buyers are still chasing lower-cost housing assets where a few hundred sites can reshape a small region’s rental landscape. (nmhc.org) (rebusinessonline.com) (aspenjournalism.org)
