The Southern California investor enters one of San Diego County’s most supply-constrained multifamily submarkets with a value-add play priced below the seller’s 2022 basis.
Jacobson Equities has acquired Haven Poway, a 107-unit garden-style apartment community in Poway, from Pacific Urban Investors for $38.8 million, or roughly $362,617 per unit. The deal, which closed May 11, gives the Southern California sponsor its first foothold in one of San Diego County’s tightest rental submarkets and resets the basis on an asset that last traded for $41.7 million in October 2022.
The price tag reflects a roughly 7 percent markdown from the seller’s prior acquisition cost, even as the broader San Diego multifamily market has firmed in early 2026. The property’s most recent assessed value sat at $43.3 million, meaning the buyer is stepping in well below assessment and on a per-unit figure that lines up almost exactly with the countywide median sale price.
Pacific Urban Investors, a well-capitalized West Coast multifamily specialist with more than $1 billion in transaction volume across its platform, originally purchased the asset in late 2022 near the peak of the pandemic-era pricing cycle. The exit underscores how the 2021 to 2022 vintage of multifamily acquisitions, financed at historically low rates and underwritten to aggressive rent growth, is now working its way through the system as interest rates have reset higher and rent growth has flattened.
For the buyer, the math points to a classic value-add play. Jacobson Equities plans to execute a renovation strategy designed to push rents at a property in a submarket where new supply is virtually nonexistent and demographics skew high-income. Poway sits within the broader Poway/Santee/Ramona submarket, an area that recorded only a handful of multifamily trades over the past five years before activity picked up at the start of 2026, according to Northmarq’s Q1 2026 San Diego multifamily report.
That scarcity is the strategic backdrop. The countywide median sale price climbed 9 percent in the first quarter to $362,600 per unit, putting it in line with peak 2022 levels, according to Northmarq. The Haven Poway transaction priced at $362,617 per unit lands almost exactly on that median, suggesting institutional pricing discipline has returned to the market even as headline rent growth remains soft.
Citywide fundamentals tell a more nuanced story. San Diego delivered 6,100 new apartment units last year, the highest annual delivery volume in 25 years, and another 7,900 units are currently under construction, according to a 2026 market analysis from ACI Apartments. That wave of supply has concentrated pressure on luxury 4- and 5-Star product, where vacancy has climbed to roughly 12 percent. Older, well-located 2- and 3-Star inventory, the category Haven Poway fits, has held up considerably better. Twelve-month asking rent growth countywide currently registers at negative 0.2 percent, well off the unsustainable pace of 2021 and 2022.
Poway itself is largely insulated from that supply wave. The submarket has minimal land available for new ground-up multifamily, restrictive entitlement pathways, and a median household income that runs well above the county average. Those barriers to entry are exactly what Jacobson Equities is buying. The sponsor’s thesis rests on the premise that workforce and middle-tier housing in supply-constrained pockets of coastal Southern California will outperform luxury product getting absorbed in higher-delivery submarkets like Balboa Park, where inventory is forecast to expand by 14 percent in 2026 alone, according to Northmarq.
National signals support the timing. U.S. multifamily vacancy fell to 4.8 percent in Q1 2026 as net absorption surpassed completions for the first time in three quarters, and multifamily investment volume rose 9 percent year-over-year on improved buyer sentiment for core acquisitions, according to CBRE. Cushman & Wakefield’s Q1 2026 U.S. Multifamily MarketBeat reported net absorption of 65,200 units in the quarter, broadly in line with the long-run first-quarter average and reflecting resilient renter household formation despite weak job and population growth.
For Pacific Urban Investors, the sale closes out a four-year hold on a deal that did not deliver the appreciation the firm likely underwrote in 2022. For Jacobson Equities, the acquisition marks a meaningful expansion of a portfolio that now totals roughly $181 million across four deals. The firm’s bet is that an older, well-located workforce-housing asset in Poway, acquired below the seller’s basis and reset for a renovation program, will outperform the more crowded luxury segment as San Diego’s supply pipeline begins to thin in 2027 and beyond. With new construction starts slowing on the back of elevated build costs and tighter financing, the current pipeline may represent a peak, according to ACI Apartments. That dynamic favors well-located 2- and 3-Star product, which is precisely where this deal lands.
