Arizona Developer Is Cracking the Attainable Housing Code

Greenlight Communities is the first developer to focus solely on attainable housing rental product. The developer is addressing the nationwide housing crisis, and already has two projects underway in Scottsdale, Arizona. Greenlight has been working on attainable housing for a decade, and has now created a strategy for ground-up development.

“When the downturn came, we saw a niche in the market to buy older apartment buildings and renovating them,” Patricia Watts, co-founder of Greenlight Communities, tells GlobeSt.com. “We were able to buy older apartment buildings in really good locations and bring them back to life by upgrading the property. We were providing attainable rental housing, and it was housing that was affordable for people that lived in the neighborhood. It was a really successful model.”

Now, the developer is shifting from a value-add strategy to ground-up development. The firm’s first two developments are Cabana on Washington, a 226-unit, $32 million project, and Cabana on 12^th, a 252-unit projects. Both projects are scheduled for completion in April 2020. “We knew there was a market for this segment, and we wanted to see if we could build into that market segment. That had been a challenge for developers,” says Watts. “Developers were building luxury product really well, but no one was really building attainable and we knew that was where the demand was.”