ARLINGTON, VA-AvalonBay Communities was among the first real estate developers to begin building again after the recession, while keeping with its strategic acquisition and disposition pattern. Life has been no different in its hometown region, as it revealed in its newly-released first quarter 2011 results. This month it acquired Fairfax Towers, a 415-unit high-rise community in Falls Church, VA, for a purchase price of $89.2 million. As part of the deal, AvalonBay assumed the existing 4.75% fixed-rate mortgage loan of $44 million, which matures in August 2015.

Also in the first quarter of 2011, AvalonBay purchased for $6.5 million its joint venture partner’s interest in Avalon at Rock Spring, a 386-unit apartment building in Rockville, MD, which is subject to a ground lease. The REIT also revealed in its earnings plans to sell its portion of the JV in the second half of 2011. A call to AvalonBay was not returned in time for deadline.

Recognizing the coming shortage of multifamily homes, thanks to a two-year drought in supply, AvalonBay has projects underway in the area. It is currently at work on a 350-unit apartment building on Westpark Drive in Tysons Corner, VA, and is currently negotiating the planning board process in Huntington, VA, with its pending affordable housing project slated for south of the Huntington train station.

At the same time the REIT is well on its way to filling its development pipeline elsewhere around the country--among the first to test the development waters outside the nation's capital. Last year it delivered about 1,260 apartment units in communities in Brooklyn, NY and Oakland, CA. More recently, it broke ground on Avalon at Wesmont Station, a transit-oriented neighborhood in New Jersey. It also recently closed on a $500-million asset exchange with UDR, with the two companies swapping a development parcel and apartment communities in California and Massachusetts.