BlackRock Pays $1.63B for Camden's California Apartments

A BlackRock-managed fund closed on Camden Property Trust’s entire Southern California apartment portfolio for roughly $1.63 billion on July 29, the largest US multifamily sale since June 2024, according to Camden’s own second-quarter filing and reporting from Commercial Observer. The deal covers 11 communities and 3,620 apartment homes across Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties, ending Camden’s 28-year run as a California owner.

Why it matters

This is the number the multifamily market has been waiting on. Institutional apartment sales have been scarce for two years as buyers and sellers argued over where cap rates should sit, and no trade this size has cleared since mid-2024. Camden’s exit, and BlackRock’s willingness to write the largest check in the sector in two years, gives every owner and underwriter a fresh, real print to measure against instead of stale 2024 comps. JLL, which represented Camden and arranged $566.6 million in acquisition financing for the buyer, called it one of the biggest apartment portfolio deals ever completed in Southern California.

The numbers

Camden’s filing puts the aggregate sales price at approximately $1.625 billion for the 11-community, 3,620-unit portfolio, which was 96 percent occupied. That works out to roughly $449,000 per apartment home, a figure Camden did not state outright but that follows directly from the unit count and price disclosed in the filing. Camden said about $0.9 billion of the proceeds will retire balances on its unsecured revolving credit facility and commercial paper program, with the rest funding $645 million of Sun Belt acquisitions and $694 million in share buybacks. Neither Camden nor Commercial Observer disclosed a cap rate on the sale.

What’s next

For anyone underwriting national multifamily right now, a nearly half-million-dollar-per-unit trade on a 96 percent leased coastal California portfolio is the new benchmark to beat, not the 2024 deals still sitting in most models. Camden has said it will keep redeploying the proceeds into Sun Belt markets, and the size of this trade is likely to pull other institutional sellers who have been waiting on the sidelines back into the market.