Monarch Flips Back to Apartment Complex

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The Monarch, which started out initially as an apartment highrise & flipped to condo sales, has flipped back to its original conception as an apartment community. The project looks to be about 80% complete, and the word through the grapevine is that its investors set an end of October goal of 80% sold in order to move forward with the project as a condo sale.

There's been a ton of speculation about the downtown Austin condo market. I'm a little leery of it - especially with the recent shifts in the mortgage market. Most of the projects are very close to sold out in pre-construction. However, I think that a large percentage of the buyers downtown are in the volatile "alt-A" category & will be very curious to see how many of the contracts convert.

Regardless, I think the Monarch's conversion back to a rental apartment community is a good shift for downtown. It adds much needed lease units, and takes a nice chunk of sale inventory out of the market - which will help prop up the prices.

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