Camden pays up for a stabilized Nashville Gulch tower

Camden Property Trust has paid $88.6 million for Harlowe, a 16-story, 300-unit tower in Nashville's Gulch that opened in 2022 and is 93.7% occupied — nearly $300,000 a door, according to Connect CRE. Camden says the building will be renamed Camden Gulch, and Connect CRE, citing the Nashville Business Journal, reports that Greystar was both developer and seller, having bought the 908 Division St. site in 2019.

The Gulch purchase is Camden's second Nashville apartment acquisition in roughly three months, following a $43.5 million June deal for a Franklin complex, and brings the company's area count to six within a portfolio of more than 167 apartment communities nationwide. Both were purchases of operating buildings, which suggests Camden is assembling Nashville market share now rather than waiting on the sidelines for prices to move lower.

At nearly $300,000 a door, the underwriting is less about heavy renovation or lease-up upside than about rent already in place: Harlowe is close to full, barely four years old, and has a rent roll, so Camden is paying for current income to continue. PWD's tracking has traced the same pattern across multifamily — capital is still paying for operations and well-located new product even as cap rates climb. The harder question is whether the same math holds when buyers move from 2022-vintage, high-occupancy towers to older or workforce properties, where maintenance and tenant turnover make the income less predictable.

Greystar developed the tower and is selling a stabilized asset, but it has not left property markets; late last month its €2.7 billion pan-European value-add fund added a fully let student housing complex near Cork, Ireland. Selling a stabilized U.S. apartment tower while buying a stabilized European student asset looks less like an apartment exit than a rotation within the same asset class, with Greystar placing its next bets across the Atlantic and Camden putting more chips on a Nashville infill neighborhood.