Why This San Francisco-Based Investor is Skipping Over California to put Money in San Antonio

Hamilton Zanze CEO Mark Hamilton spoke to the San Antonio Business Journal about HZ’s acquisition strategy in Texas:

“‘We cut our teeth doing smaller projects in the San Francisco area, and it got to a point where I wasn’t sure we could make the kind of predictable cash flow we like to make for investors,’ Hamilton said. ‘We started moving to other states because we saw so much capital demand for California apartments; the price was up so high, but the returns went down.’

That’s what pushed the firm to Texas, where it owns properties across Dallas, Austin and Houston as well. What’s interesting, though, is that while San Antonio was the last of the four Texas markets Hamilton Zanze jumped into, the firm’s CEO said it was the first one they started looking at.

‘It took us a very long time to find the combination of getting an asset we liked, a return structure we liked and a sense of where job growth was going,’ he said. ‘We turned over rocks and looked at things for a period of time, but two years ago, we finally saw that flurry of properties that we jumped on.'”

Read the full story at the San Antonio Business Journal.