Mid-America nears $4bn Post Properties deal

Bloomberg

Mid-America Apartment Communities Inc., a real-estate investment trust, is close to a deal to buy Post Properties Inc. for about $4 billion as demand for rental properties booms, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Post Properties shareholders
will get 0.71 share of new
MAA stock for each share in a
deal, according to the newspaper’s website, which cited people
familiar with the matter that it didn’t name.
Apartment managers have benefited from a recovery in the housing market as rising home prices have turned many would-be buyers into renters, the Journal said.
At the same time, growth in rents has begun to slow, creating an
incentive for mergers that reduce costs. Post and MAA didn’t immediately return e-mails and phone calls seeking comment.
Post, valued at about $3.3 billion, has risen 5.2 percent this year to close at $62.22 in New York on Friday. MAA, with a market value of $7.7 billion, is up 12 percent for the year to $102.15.
The deal would generate cost savings of about $20 million, according to the Journal.