The sale
Camden Property Trust closed the sale of its entire California portfolio — 11 operating communities totaling 3,620 apartment homes — for approximately $1.625 billion on July 29, 2026, according to the company's Form 8-K and accompanying second-quarter earnings release filed with the SEC. The portfolio spanned the Los Angeles-Orange County and San Diego-Inland Empire markets and had been classified as held for sale as of June 30, 2026.
An Estate Wire calculation based on the disclosed total puts the price at roughly $449,000 per unit. Approximately $0.9 billion of the proceeds were earmarked to retire balances outstanding under Camden's unsecured revolving credit facility and commercial paper program, according to the earnings release. Camden's buyer was not disclosed in the filing. Bisnow reported the portfolio had been marketed since January 2026 at an asking price of about $1.5 billion, meaning the closing price came in roughly 8% above that initial ask.
Redeploying into the Sun Belt
In the same quarter, Camden acquired five development communities and two land parcels for $645.4 million, adding 2,061 units across Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Arizona and North Carolina, according to the earnings release. Camden executives described the strategy on the company's second-quarter earnings call as reallocating the California proceeds into Sun Belt markets and share buybacks, aiming for what the earnings-call summary characterized as a 'younger, growth-oriented portfolio.'
Following the sale, Camden's remaining portfolio comprised 167 properties and 56,695 units, with occupancy of 95.7%, according to the company's disclosures. The exit removes Camden entirely from a state where new multifamily supply and regulatory costs have weighed on returns relative to faster-growing Sun Belt metros — though the earnings materials reviewed here do not spell out the specific return comparison that motivated the exit beyond the stated goal of portfolio reallocation.
The quarter's financials
Camden's second-quarter 2026 earnings per diluted share were $0.18, down from $0.74 in the second quarter of 2025, a decline the earnings release does not fully explain in the sections reviewed but which sits alongside FFO of $1.68 per diluted share, up slightly from $1.67 a year earlier and $0.03 ahead of the company's own guidance midpoint. Core FFO of $1.68 came in a penny above the guidance midpoint of $1.67.
Excluding California, same-property net operating income fell 1.4% year over year and 1.3% sequentially in the second quarter, with revenue roughly flat (down 0.1%) against expense growth of 2.4%, according to the earnings release — a squeeze that helps explain why redeploying capital into new development and buybacks, rather than simply holding the existing footprint, was the stated priority for the freed-up capital.
The balance sheet behind the sale
Camden's Form 10-Q for the quarter ended June 30, 2026 shows total notes payable of $4,848.3 million, including $357.0 million drawn on the company's revolving credit facility and $600.0 million of commercial paper outstanding — the two categories the earnings release said would absorb roughly $0.9 billion of the California sale proceeds. The 10-Q also discloses a separate $500.0 million at-the-market equity program under which Camden had sold no shares and entered no forward sale agreements as of the filing date, meaning the company had that issuance capacity available but had not tapped it.
The same filing records a $53.0 million settlement obligation, payable in two installments: a first payment of $26.5 million already made, with the second $26.5 million due in the third quarter of 2026. The 10-Q does not identify the underlying matter in the sections reviewed for this article. Separately, the filing confirms Camden had repurchased 2,965,359 of its own common shares for approximately $302.1 million through June 30, 2026, leaving $297.9 million of authorized capacity remaining under the buyback program — the same repurchase authority the earnings call cited as one destination for the freed-up California capital, alongside Sun Belt development.
The 10-Q also shows Camden closed on a new $350.0 million 364-day term loan on July 8, 2026, days before the California sale closed, a short-term borrowing that filings do not explain further but that fell in the same window as the portfolio's disposition and the associated debt paydown.