One of the largest operators of single-family rental homes in the nation has opened a factory in South Texas to produce hundreds of homes each year, including homes it will deliver to North Texas.
Austin-based Amherst opened the manufacturing facility in April in a former textile mill in Cuero, a city southeast of San Antonio and southwest of Houston. The company purchased the dilapidated, abandoned mill in 2021.
The company, which manages more than 44,000 homes in 19 states, hopes to help fill the need for rental housing across the state through its StudioBuilt initiative. Amherst plans to invest more than $12 million in the factory.
Like traditional homes, the homes will be made of wood and placed on permanent foundations.
“This is going to look to a consumer like any other house on the street,” Genger Charles, managing director of external affairs and impact strategy for Amherst, told The Dallas Morning News. “It just is going to come in much faster and be produced at a lower cost of development that allows it to be accessible to more people.”
The company expects to produce 600 homes a year at the 330,000-square-foot facility when fully staffed. It will have 265 employees in Cuero and surrounding areas. Amherst has already delivered a few homes in San Antonio.
Charles said the facility can produce homes in just six months.
“We can really ramp up the ability to meet that unmet need in the market,” she said.
Homes will be constructed in Cuero and delivered throughout Texas, including Dallas-Fort Worth. Amherst also uses third-party factories to produce its homes, but Charles said having its own facility will give the company more flexibility in the kinds of homes it can produce.
The homes will range from one- to two-story single-family homes to duplexes and triplexes. Amherst will place the homes on vacant lots or sites of blighted properties. The company will sell some of the homes it produces, but its focus is on producing rentals.
Charles said the company is securing lots for homes in Dallas-Fort Worth, with some properties in the permitting process. She said the company sees this as a solution to address the diverse needs of communities throughout the region.
“Every municipality has its own flavor of need,” she said. “We have the appetite to try to help them navigate that.”
