NRP Plans $52M East Austin Apartments

A large national multifamily developer is planning a development in Austin.

NRP Group filed to construct a two-building apartment project at 8705 Decker Lane Road in far East Austin. The proposed development will span 486,000 square feet and cost $52 million, according to the filing.

Work is slated to start next year and wrap up in January 2027. The name attached to the project at the moment is Rodeo Drive Multifamily. The filing did not disclose how many units are planned.

Last year, NRP filed to build a similar project, Airport Cross, just east of Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. That development was expected to cost $41.5 million and comprise 256 apartments across 292,500 square feet. Austin-based firm the Davies Collaborative is the architect attached to the project.

A handful of major multifamily developments are underway in far East Austin, including a plan by Endeavor to redevelop an old dairy plant into 1,400 apartments, 400,000 square feet of office space and a 220-key hotel. That proposal has been caught in a legal morass as local community groups have sued to stop it on environmental grounds.

NRP has been in Austin since 2017, and it has built 24 apartment developments in the city since then. The projects cost around $1.4 billion and delivered 7,190 units. Nationwide, it has built 56,000 apartments.

Multifamily development in Austin and across Texas has been on a roller coaster ride in recent years. Since 2021, when Dallas and Austin built up some of the biggest development pipelines in the country, new permits for apartment developments have plummeted in the cities. Developers and analysts blame a mix of tight capital markets and a surge of supply, which has resulted in lower rent growth.

That means that come 2026, when projects that start today are coming online, there will possibly be a shortage of new inventory, setting up projects like NRP’s to come online as landlords regain pricing power.