Rastegar Property Company Scores $32M for Austonio Community

An Austin real estate investor has secured funding to launch the first phase of an ambitious master-planned community in Kyle.

Ari Rastegar’s Rastegar Property Company scored $31.7 million in construction financing from Trez Capital to kickstart Infinity Square, a 318-acre master-planned community located between Austin and San Antonio, Commercial Observer reported.

The funding means Rastegar can start the project’s first phase, which includes 329 home lots at 700-800 Bunton Lane, about 20 minutes south of Downtown Austin and 45 minutes northeast of San Antonio. Infinity Square will ultimately have 1,000 single-family homes, 1,400 apartments, 185,000 square feet of commercial space and an elementary school.

The loan is a feat amid a difficult lending environment. But the region’s strong rental fundamentals, along with investments in the area from companies like Samsung and SpaceX, gave the lender confidence in the project.

“We look to do loans in cities that have high population growth and high job growth,” Trez Capital’s John Hutchinson said.

Rastegar, who is from Austin, started his firm in 2015 with multifamily development in his hometown. He is developing a 600,000-square-foot industrial complex near Tesla’s Gigafactory, and he has built luxury rentals in Dallas and Austin.

“We started having institutional capital pretty early in the firm’s history, just two years in, and I got the investor by a cold call,” Rastegar told The Real Deal last year. “We’ve built the whole company on cold calls.”

He acquired the Kyle site in two parts in 2019 and 2021, and his team laid the groundwork for the project, including overcoming complex zoning and infrastructure challenges. Their efforts have involved collaborating with city officials to incorporate a school on what was previously farmland.

The project reflects Rastegar’s broader strategy of undertaking large-scale developments in the Sun Belt, where his firm has nine projects totaling $1.5 billion in development costs.

— Andrew Terrell