Greystar Real Estate Partners is ramping up its apartment plans for a site in California's Silicon Valley, a higher-end housing hub where major technology players like Meta and Apple continue to drive demand for new supply.

The South Carolina-based firm has proposed the addition of a 140-unit apartment complex to a site in Menlo Park — home to Facebook's parent company, Meta — at 104 Constitution Drive, where Greystar has already won approvals for a separate, 355-unit apartment building.

Greystar is invoking the so-called builder's remedy provision for the latest addition, a law that permits homebuilders to largely override the entitlement process in cities without an approved plan to meet state housing development goals. Menlo Park is one of several California cities without an approved housing element; its plan for building the required 3,000 housing units by 2031 is under review by the state.

The nearly 1-acre lot is roughly 2 miles from Meta’s 1 million-square-foot headquarters and is on the same street as a 441-unit project that Greystar opened earlier this year. Demand for residences, driven by the large tech employer base, caused the region's multifamily vacancy rate to hit a seven-year low of 8.5% this year, according to CoStar data.

Silicon Valley cities that are house to technology companies including Meta, Google and Apple have the highest apartment rents in the region, according to CoStar data, with Google's home of Mountain View counting the highest rents of $3,310 per month, above the national average of $1,689. Menlo Park's average monthly rents are hovering around $3,138 per month, up from $3,040 last year.

Greystar's newest Menlo Park project, dubbed Luma, is commanding average rents of $3,468 per month, higher than Silicon Valley’s average of $3,071. About a decade ago, rents in Menlo Park were 10% below the greater Silicon Valley average, according to CoStar data.

California's housing mandates have rolled out in the past year to help alleviate affordability concerns, with the state short some 3 million houses to accommodate the state's population, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

The deadline for cities to establish their plans to meet such mandates was in January 2023, and cities without an approved plan are subject to "builder's remedy," a provision established in 1990.

While the provision allows developers to win automatic approvals for certain projects, the proposals must still obtain building permits. That has presented a challenge as many "builder's remedy" projects are moving forward in unincorporated areas without proper zoning for residential or mixed-use projects, complicating the permit process, according to Kelly Snider, professor of urban and regional planning at San Jose State University.

Developers in Menlo Park moving forward with housing plans to meet demand include Mountain-View based Sobrato Organization, with plans for a 432-unit project a mile from Meta’s campus, and Meta itself. The social media firm won approvals last year for a long-planned, mixed-use expansion of its headquarters that aims to add 17,000 homes and 1.2 million square feet of offices. The project has yet to begin construction.

Other Silicon Valley tech home bases have become housing hotbeds, too. Sand Hill Property recently won approvals to transform a vacant Cupertino mall near Apple's headquarters into 3,000 houses, 2 million square feet of offices and 230,000 square feet of retail property.

That same developer also filed plans to build a 100-unit apartment complex near Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, and the search engine giant has filed housing plans of its own in San Jose.

After California cities receive the state's sign off for their housing plans, they are no longer subject to the "builder's remedy" provision; however, if a city's housing pipeline indicates it is not on track to meet such goals, the city is subject to a different housing law, called Senate Bill 423, passed last year.

The law goes into effect when a city is without an approved housing plan, similar to "builder's remedy," and requires cities to fast-track residential proposals if behind on housing development. Still, the senate bill requires a sign-off from some departments — other than the planning commission — while "builder's remedy" allows developers to bypass all city approvals.

Both laws require a certain amount of housing units to be designated affordable in order for developers to take advantage of the fast-tracked approvals process.

Most cities, like Menlo Park, are to be reviewed by the state each four years, but San Francisco, a city with a lofty housing requirement known for its slower-than-usual approvals process, is subject to state review each year.

San Francisco is mandated by California to have a plan to build 82,000 new residences, one of the highest requirements in the state, between 2023 and 2031. The city recently became the first in the state to be deemed not on track to meet state-mandated housing development goals, and developers are already making moves to take advantage of the benefits of the bill.