Crescent Communities Acquires Land for Durham Development
Upon completion, anticipated in 2026, the community will feature 400 units.

Crescent Communities has closed on the land for Novel Uhill, a 400-unit multifamily development in the University Hill neighborhood of Durham, N.C., for $8 million, according to county property records. The site is roughly 6.5 acres.
Plans call for studios, one-, two- and three-bedroom units, along with 19 freestanding two- and three-bedroom townhouses. The project is slated for a 2026 completion.
Common-area amenities will include a 1,450-square-foot lounge with wine and beer taps and a fireplace, a community clubroom, a pool with chaise lounges and a grilling station and a fitness studio with private yoga rooms. There will also be bike lounge equipped with rentals, a coworking lounge and two outdoor courtyards with play equipment, fire pits, grilling stations, a putting green and an outdoor TV.
Novel UHill will incorporate art installations throughout the property, tying into the neighborhood’s UHill Walls program, which features over 40,000 square feet of murals on 15 acres.
Crescent Communities Construction, Crescent’s in-house construction arm, will be the general contractor. KTGY is the project’s architect and Kimley Horn & Associates will do its civil engineering and landscape architecture.
Investment partners include Kyuden Urban Development America, the U.S. subsidiary of Kyushu Electric Power Co., and NEC Capital Solutions America, the U.S. subsidiary of NEC Capital Solutions. Santander Bank is providing debt financing.
Crescent Communities’ current pipeline includes 15,300 multifamily and single-family build-to-rent units, along with 58,000 square feet of complementary retail space and 7.5 million square feet of office, industrial, and life-sciences assets. The company has variously received LEED, NGBS (National Green Building Standard), Fitwel and WELL certifications.Â
Raleigh-Durham occupancy cools
The Raleigh-Durham multifamily occupancy rate came in at 93.8 percent in the third quarter of 2024, a 20-basis-point decrease year-over-year, according to Yardi Matrix data. Among higher-end lifestyle properties, occupancies are higher, coming in at 94.2 percent, though that too represents a 20-basis point decrease since a year ago.
Through September 2024, some 7,639 multifamily units came online in the metro, or 4 percent of existing stock, meaning that Raleigh-Durham is seeing a more vigorous pace of development than most markets, and the U.S. as a whole. Nationwide, the country added 2.1 percent of the existing stock of apartments since the beginning of 2024.
As in most markets, most of the new stock was upper end. All but two properties that came online in Raleigh-Durham were lifestyle communities, while the small remainder were fully affordable. All together, some 8,589 units were delivered during 2023 in metro Raleigh-Durham, notes Yardi Matrix.