In Houston, Crescent Communities is primarily known for its single-family master-planned communities, but that’s about the change. Its new wave of multifamily development throughout the Sun Belt includes two Houston apartment complexes.

We caught up with chief marketing officer Tyler Niess and president of multifamily Brian Natwick at ULI’s annual conference in Houston yesterday morning; they tell us they’re wrapping up a cycle of 20 multifamily properties totaling 6,000 units in the Southeast and Southwest. Now Crescent’s raising partner equity capital, hoping to find strategic partner(s) to co-invest with the equity that Crescent freed up when it contracted for the sale of nine newly built communities to Berkshire and UBS for approximately $700M last year.

Crescent plans to start 10 new developments this year and 10 more next year for a total of 7,000 units and $1.4B of construction. That includes Crescent Northgate (rendered here), a 300-unit community underway near the Hardy Toll Road and Grand Parkway intersection close to Exxon’s campus. It’ll deliver in late 2016. Crescent also owns a site in the River Oaks District (at Westheimer and Willowick) that it’s holding for future development. Brian tells us about half of the upcoming projects are in Southwestern markets like Phoenix, Denver, Houston and Dallas that weren’t in vogue compared to primary markets when the firm started lining up sites five years ago.